Missions Their Rise And Development

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No. 55

Editors:

HERBERT FISHER, M.A., F.B.A.
PROF. GILBERT MURRAY, Lixx.D.,

LL.D., F.B.A.

PROF. J. ARTHUR THOMSON, M.A.
PROF. WILLIAM T. BREWSTER, M.A.

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PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Just Published
PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY . By BERTRAND RUSSELL

BUDDHISM By MRS. RHYS DAVIDS

ENGLISH SECTS By W. B. SELBIE

THE MAKING OF THE NEW

TESTAMENT t By B. W. BACON

ETHICS . . . By G. E. MOORE

MISSIONS By MRS. CREIGHTON

Future Issues

THE OLD TESTAMENT .... By GEORGE MOORE
BETWEEN THE OLD AND NEW

TESTAMENTS By R. H. CHARLES

COMPARATIVE RELIGION . . By J. ESTLIN CARPENTER
A HISTORY OF FREEDOM OF

THOUGHT ByJ. B.BURY

MISSIONS

THEIR RISE AND;,:DEVELOP-

BY

LOUISE CREIGHTON

AUTHOR OF "A FIRST BISTORT OF ENGLAND," "LIFE

OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH,'* "LIFE AND

LETTERS OF DR. CREIGHTON," ETC.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

LONDON
WILLIAMS AND NORGATE

COPYRIGHT, 1912,

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I MISSIONS BEFORE TELE REFORMATION .... 7

II THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY THROUGH DIS-
COVERY AND COLONISATION 21

III THE REFORMATION AND THE BEGINNING OF

PROTESTANT MISSIONS 47

IV THE BEGINNING OF MODERN MISSIONS AND THEIR

RELATIONS TO GOVERNMENTS 65

V METHODS OF MISSION WORK AMONGST NON-
CHRISTIAN PEOPLES 88

VI WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 112

VII THE MOSLEM PROBLEM 128

VIII MISSION WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 144

IX THE CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS .... 164

X THE PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS .... 195

XI THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 233

BIBLIOGRAPHY 253

INDEX 255

MISSIONS

CHAPTER I

MISSIONS BEFORE THE REFORMATION"

SINCE the days of the first Apostles, the
great work of spreading the religion of Christ
throughout the world has never ceased. At
some times zeal and progress have been
greater than at others, but the advance has
been continuous, and the methods by which
that advance has been secured have been
singularly alike in all ages, so that in the
record of the successes and failures of the
past, the Church of the present day should
find its best guidance for further progress.

The spread of Christianity has always
been allied with the spread of civilisation,
partly of course because Christianity itself is
one of the chief, if not the chief, of civilising
agencies, partly because the spread of new
ideas is easier and more rapid amongst those

7

8 MISSIONS

who have attained to some measure of civil-
isation. It was the ready means of commu-
nication, the peace and order, the education,
throughout the Roman Empire which made
possible the development of the early Church.
Success brought with it its own dangers, for
when after the conversion of Constantine
(A. D. 312), Christianity became fashionable,
many called themselves Christian who cared
little for the faith, and the Church began to
face all the difficulties resulting from its
association with political power.

When once the Roman Empire was nomin-
ally Christian, the question of the conversion
of the fierce pagan tribes who surged round
its frontiers and constantly invaded its terri-
tories was the next task of the Church; an
urgent task in the mind of the Churchman,
eager to save these sinful souls from destruc-
tion, and an equally urgent task in the eyes
of the statesman, since he judged it to be the
best means of leading these rude and restless
men to settle down and develop into peaceful
and industrious nations

The early missionaries were for the most
part monks, men who had renounced the
world and given up their lives to the service

BEFORE THE REFORMATION 9

of God. Though many of them were but
ignorant and simple men, it was through
them, taken as a whole, that knowledge,
education and the peaceful arts were spread
amongst the peoples. The history and
methods of the gradual advance of the
Christian faith during the early centuries is
to a large extent unknown, but some great
teachers and some great events stand out
amidst the general obscurity. Amongst the
Goths around the Danube, Ulfilas (A.D. 818-
383), not only taught and ministered, but
showed himself their friend by obtaining for
them a grant of rich pasture land within the
Roman border, where they could settle and
feed their flocks in peace, so earning for him-
self the name of a new Moses. He also, as so
many missionaries since his day have done,
reduced their language to writing, and made
an alphabet for it. He translated the Bible
for the use of his people, but he would not
include the Books of the Kings in his trans-
lation, lest he should encourage the Goths in
their warlike tendencies.

Patrick, a Christian boy who was carried
off from Scotland by Irish pirates and sold
into slavery as a swineherd, was so moved

10 MISSIONS

with pity at the sight of the ignorance of the
Irish, that when he had escaped after six
years' captivity, his one desire was to go
back to preach the true faith to the people
amongst whom he had toiled as a slave. He
returned to Ireland (A.D. 405) with a little band
of followers. His previous knowledge of the
country and of the language, joined to his
dauntless courage and burning zeal, enabled
him not only to convert many to Christian-
ity, but to lay with wise forethought the
foundations of the Church in Ireland. The
Irish have ever honoured him as their pat-
ron saint.

The great missionary amongst the Ger-
mans, Winfrith, afterwards called Boniface
(A.D. 680-755), was an Englishman born in
Devon. The stories he heard in his youth of
the English and Irish missionaries who
laboured amongst the pagan German tribes,
inspired him to follow their example. His
work was marked by devotion and wisdom.
He founded monasteries, notably the famous
monastery of Fulda, as centres of learning,
with schools attached to them, and brought
civilisation amongst the barbarous tribes.
But in his life we see already many of the

BEFORE THE REFORMATION 11

difficulties of the future. He wished to or-
ganise the work of the missionaries, and to
bring it into close connexion with the au-
thority of the Pope at Rome. Christian
communtites which had grown up independ-
ently were not always willing to come into
line, either in matters of organisation or of
doctrine. There were conflicts with heretical
teachers as well as with careless Christians
and wild pagans. But through all his strug-
gles, whether as Bishop or Archbishop, to
uphold the authority of Rome, the zeal of
the missionary never waxed cold in Boni-
face's soul. At the age of seventy, he re-
signed his office as Archbishop of Mentz and
went as a missionary to the still heathen
Frisians. There, together with fifty-two
followers, he was massacred by a band of
pagans just as he was preparing to confirm a
number of his converts.

The work begun by individual missionaries
was carried on by the monasteries which they
founded, and which served as training-places
for missionaries and teachers. The monas-
teries did much for the civilisation as well
as for the conversion of Europe, as may
be learned from the history of the famous

18 MISSIONS

monasteries in Britain lona, Lindisfarne,
Whitby, Croyland and many others. But
the conversion of the peoples did not always
proceed by slow and peaceful means. Some-
times the conversion of a king was followed
by the wholesale conversion of his people, as
was the case with Clovis, king of the Franks,
who with all his warriors became a convert
(496) in consequence of a victory over his
enemies, and Ethelbert, king of Kent, whose
baptism was at once followed by that of
thousands of his followers. Then the real
work of the missionary had to follow the
baptism of the people, who, though they
might become nominal Christians, still clung
often for generations to their pagan habits
and customs. Thus history shows us the
same problems which perplex the modern
missionary, the doubt whether it is best to
begin from above with the rulers and leaders,
or from below with the people, and the diffi-
culties attending the mass movements of
whole peoples to Christianity.

Sometimes force was used by the kings to
compel conversions. Charles the Great, in
his attempts to bring the indomitable Saxons
to submission, compelled them to receive

BEFORE THE REFORMATION 13

baptism at the point of the sword, in spite
of the remonstrances of Alcuin, the learned
Englishman, his adviser and friend, who said,
"Carry on evangelisation according to the
example of the Apostles; of what use is
baptism without faith?" Vladimir of Kief
(972-1015), having once decided that Chris-
tianity was the best religion, threw down and
destroyed, amidst the tears of the Slavs, the
idols they revered, and at his orders men,
women, and children plunged naked into the
Dnieper for baptism, whilst the priests
prayed on the banks. Small wonder that
with such methods, when self-interest, if
not the desire for self-preservation, com-
pelled conversion, the real progress of Chris-
tianity was slow.

The desire for the conversion of the
Saracens was one of the chief motives that
inspired the Crusaders, and the work of
bringing the remaining pagan peoples in the
north of Europe to Christianity was under-
taken by a military religious order, the
Teutonic knights. They brought order into
the frontier districts of North-eastern Eu-
rope, and subdued the wild peoples that
lived on the shores of the Baltic, converting

14 MISSIONS

them to Christianity in the early thirteenth
century and sending mission clergy to min-
ister to them.

Roughly speaking, it took ten centuries
for Europe to become nominally Christian,
though even then the greater part of Russia
and much of Scandinavia and the shores of
the Baltic were still untouched, whilst the
south of Spain remained under the rule of
the Moors. It is well to remember this in
the consideration of the history of the fur-
ther progress of the Christian Church during
the next ten centuries, and also to notice how
the work of the missionaries suffered from
alliance with the world power and from the
use of methods utterly opposed to the spirit
of the religion which they were seeking to
spread. Yet in spite of countless mistakes,
Christianity showed itself everywhere as
the great civilising and educating influence
amongst the peoples of Europe.

The spread of Christianity had made the
organisation of the Church necessary. That
organisation centred round the Papacy, and
the Papacy became a world power eager to
maintain its supremacy among the nations.
Zeal for the conversion of the world grew cold

BEFORE THE REFORMATION 15

in days when the rulers of the Church were
busied with controlling the politics of the
nations. It needed a spiritual revival to
bring back religion into the lives of the peo-
ple. This revival came with the rise of the
friars. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) aimed
not only at preaching to the poor and
ignorant in Europe, he longed to bring the
Saracens under the power of the Cross by
preaching rather than by military conquest.
Though his own efforts led to no results,
his followers never forgot that their activity
was not to be limited to Europe. His own
conviction that the Moslems must be won to
the Christian faith by words, both spoken
and written, rather than subdued by arms
was felt even more strongly by Raymond
Lull (1236-1315), a Spanish nobleman. Lull,
who was a poet and a courtier, was converted
in the midst of a gay and brilliant life by a
vision of the Crucified Saviour. A Fran-
ciscan preacher completed the work of the
vision, and Lull determined to devote his
life to the conversion of the Moslems. His
distinction lies in the fact that he realised
that for this great work careful preparation
was needed. He bought an Arab slave that

16 MISSIONS

he might learn Arabic, and gave seven years
to his studies. He visited the Pope and other
European princes, and tried to win them to
his ideas. At last he was enabled to found a
monastery where Franciscan friars might
study Arabic preparatory to being mission-
aries. Through his persuasions professor-
ships of Arabic were founded in the uni-
versities of Paris, Salamanca and Oxford.
He wrote books to convince the Moslems of
the truth of Christianity, and when at last
he failed to get any companions in his en-
terprise, he went alone at the age of fifty-
six to Tunis. There he engaged in discus-
sions with learned Moslem teachers, until
he was first imprisoned and then banished
from the country. But he escaped from the
ship which was to bear him away, and con-
tinued his teaching whilst living in hiding.
He succeeded in making several missionary
journeys about the shores of the Mediterra-
nean, preaching to Jews and Moslems.
Here and there he made a few converts. All
the time he continued his studies and wrote
books both to convince the Moslems and to
make known his own ideas. Though it is
difficult to believe the statement that he

BEFORE THE REFORMATION 17

wrote 4000 books, a list of 321 books written
by Mm is in existence. At the age of seventy-
nine he returned to Bugia on the African
coast to visit his converts there, and after
spending nearly a year amongst them in
hiding, came out to preach openly in the
market-place, where he was set upon and
stoned to death. His wise conception of the
nature of the task that lay before him, and
the time and study he gave to prepare him-
self for it, make him an example to all mis-
sionary leaders.

Whilst Lull was teaching on the African
coast, another missionary pioneer, John de
Monte Corvino, had made his way to the
court at Pekin. China was then ruled by the
Mongols. The great Mongolian Empire had
not remained untouched by Christianity.
When Nestorius, judged a heretic by the
Councils of the Church, had been banished
from the Roman Empire, his teaching spread
eastwards. His ideas as to the nature of
God were sympathetic to Eastern minds,
and for a time the Nestorian Church flour-
ished. A chain of bishops and churches
spread from Jerusalem to Pekin. But the
Nestorian Church, separated from the rest

.8 MISSIONS

>f Christendom and subject to the constant
changes which resulted from the rise of one
jreat conquering power after another in
^sia, had not been able to maintain itself.
Later teachers, however, found Nestorian
Christians, cherishing a mutilated faith,
still surviving in China. Kublai Elan, the
famous Mongol ruler, was anxious to enter
into relations with the great powers of Eu-
rope. When the Polos, two Italian travellers,
the father and uncle of the famous Marco
Polo, visited his court, he sent by them a
letter to the Pope, asking him to send to
China a hundred Christians, who should be
able to prove by argument to the idolaters
that the law of Christ was the best. He
seems to have believed that Christian teach-
ing would help to civilise and soften the un-
tamed peoples over whom he ruled. But
Christendom was not ready to answer his
appeal, and so probably a great opportunity
was lost. All that the Pope could do was to
send (1271) two Dominican friars, who fled
back to Europe when they had only accom-
plished part of their long journey.
It was nearly twenty years later that the
sent a Franciscan, John de Monte Cor-

BEFORE THE EEFORMATION 19

vino, to China. The journey there took him
three years. He had to wait a year in
India to join a caravan with which he could
travel to China, The Nestorian Christians
did not welcome his coming, and tried to put
hindrances in his way; but Kublai Elan
treated him well. He built a church at
Cambaluc, the future Pekin, trained many
boys to be choristers and priests, baptised
6000 Chinese, and translated the New
Testament and the Psalms into Chinese.
Seven other missionaries, who were already
consecrated as bishops, so as to be able to
rule the future Church in China, were sent
out to help him. But it was a dangerous
and difficult journey, and of these seven only
three reached their destination. They
laboured with toil and devotion, longing for
more help from Europe to aid them in their
tremendous task. Corvino died at the age of
eighty, and with the fall of the Mongol
power, the work which he had begun perished
also. The Mings, who succeeded as rulers
of China, wanted no foreign religion. At the
same time the zeal for missions was growing
cold in Europe, which was absorbed in its
own political and religious difficulties. The

20 MISSIONS

Church which had converted the Goths and
Teutons and Huns, allowed Africa, the land
of Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius and Au-
gustine, to be conquered by Islam, and by
the fall of Constantinople (1453) the Moslem
power gained a foothold in Europe itself.
The period preceding the Reformation was
not of a character to lead to missionary
activity.

CHAPTER H

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY THROUGH
DISCOVERY AND COLONISATION

WITHIN a few years of one another
Columbus discovered America and Vasco da
Gama reached India by sailing round the
Cape of Good Hope. The Pope claimed the
spiritual sovereignty of the whole world, and
authorised the conquest of new lands by the
discoverers on the condition that wherever
they went they should plant the Cross.
Priests accompanied the voyages of the great
discoverers, not only to minister to the
members of the expedition, but to establish
the faith in the new lands. The zeal of the
Spaniards for the conversion of the heathen
made the expeditions of Columbus, Pizarro,
and Cortez for the discovery and colonisation
of the New World assume almost the ap-
pearance of a Crusade. They did not shrink

m MISSIONS

from violent measures If gentle measures
were not sufficient for conversion. The mis-
sionaries who accompanied the expeditions
were chiefly Dominican friars, many of them
humble and devoted men who worked quietly
and zealously amongst the natives, and tried
in every way in their power to mitigate the
cruelty of the Spanish conquerors. The
Spaniard might be eager for the conversion
of the native, but he was still more eager to
win wealth from him and to force him to
work on the land of which he had been
forcibly deprived. The sufferings of the
natives, their death by thousands under
these cruel conditions, stirred the indignation
of the missionaries. Las Casas, an eminent
Dominican, who spent his whole life in the
service of the South American Indians, by
his remonstrances and representations at the
Spanish Court succeeded in having it pro-
nounced illegal to make slaves of the Indians,
with the exception of those taken captive in
an unrighteous war. He spared no pains to
improve their condition, crossing the ocean
twelve times and travelling to every part of
the newly-discovered countries, opposing in
season and out of season the rapacity and

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTL1NITY 3

cruelty of the Spanish colonists. But to
spare his Indian converts he was willing to
sanction the plan of importing negroes from
Africa to labour in the West Indies. Later,
he learned to deplore the mistaken judgment
by which he had helped to introduce the
horrors of the slave trade. The Roman
Church, whilst jealous for the conversion of
the heathen, saw no reason to object to the
capture and sale of the African negroes, and
their transport under horrible conditions to
the lands where their labour was needed. A
bull of Pope Martin V had given to Portugal
all the land the Portuguese could conquer
in Africa and Asia, and they brought negro
slaves back to Portugal from Africa on the
pretext of converting them. Later, another
papal bull (1537) sanctioned the opening of
a slave market in Lisbon, where ten to twelve
thousand negroes were sold annually for
transportation to the West Indies. About
the same time, Sir John Hawkins carried off
negroes as slaves from the West African
coast, and the English slave trade began.

Though men might seek to excuse their
treatment of the natives by a profession of
their desire for their conversion, it is clear

4 MISSIONS

that, except in the mind of a humble friar
here and there, no sense of the brotherhood
of man had yet dawned. It was the friars
who were the chief civilising agency in the
New World, as the missionaries have been in
all ages. They taught the natives to till the
ground, they built churches and schools for
them. The people loved the services of the
Church and venerated the men who minis-
tered to them. But on all sides the work of
the friars was hindered by the bad example
and the cruelty of the Spaniards. Under the
hard rule of their new masters the natives
perished by thousands, till it seemed as if
they would entirely disappear. In order to
save them from their miserable fate, the
Jesuits obtained permission to make special
settlements of the natives, where they could
guide and teach them without interference
from the colonists. The most notable of
these was in Paraguay, in the centre of South
America, where (1610) two Jesuit fathers
settled with 200 native families. At first they
suffered from the frequent raids of the
colonists who caine to carry off slaves. But
the settlements grew and prospered. The
Jesuits were as keen in their hunt for souls as

THE SPREAD OF CHEISTL4NITY 5

the colonists in their hunt for slaves. They
studied the nature of the people whom they
wished to convert, and learnt how to attract
them and win their confidence. The settle-
ments were governed by the Fathers like a
great family; every one worked for the good
of the whole; there was no private property;
industries of all kinds were practised; there
were beautiful gardens, and immense herds
of cattle. Admirably cared for in every way,
the natives were, however, treated like chil-
dren, they could not grow up into free men,
their powers of initiative were never de-
veloped, and so in the end these settlements
proved a hindrance rather than a help to the
true progress of the country.

The Jesuits stand pre-eminent amongst all
the religious orders for their missionary work.
Francisco Xavier, one of the first associates
with Ignatius Loyola in founding the order
of the Jesuits, a gifted young man of noble
family in the far south of France, was the
first of their long list of heroic missionaries.
Eloquent, impetuous, devoted, with all the
charm and vivacity of a southerner, he com-
bined a rare amount of common sense with
absolute self-sacrifice. He said: "I fear God

m MISSIONS

and nothing else In the world"; and his life
showed the truth- of his words. The King of
Portugal sent him (1541) with the Portuguese
fleet to Goa, the chief Portuguese settlement
in India, and pope and king alike supplied
him with full authority to supervise the work
of the Church there. At Goa he found al-
ready established a fine cathedral, a seminary
for training native priests, and a large Fran-
ciscan convent. He was eager to go on from
Goa to save the perishing souls of the heathen,
and soon set out to visit the villages of the
pearl fishers on the coast near Cape Comorin,
where he spent three years. He did not give
himself time to learn their language, but
worked through interpreters. His methods
were very simple. On arriving at a village
he rang a bell to gather the villagers around
him. Then he recited to them the Creed,
the Lord's Prayer, the Ave Maria, and the
Ten Commandments in Tamil. On Sundays
they were assembled together to recite the
Creed with him, and he baptised all those
who were willing; going on till fatigue made
it impossible for him to lift his arms, and his
exhausted voice could not utter the words of
blessing. Sometimes he was even without

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY 27

an interpreter, but he wrote: "I am not with-
out work, for I want no interpreter to baptise
infants just born, nor to relieve the famished
and naked who come in my way." He says
himself that in one month he baptised 10,000
converts. The whole villages who came
over in this way to a nominal Christianity
were organised into parishes with native
priests. Xavier's impatient soul longed to
see quick results, but though he could bap-
tise and organise, longer and more patient
work was needed to make these poor fisher-
folk into understanding Christians. Xavier's
energy was untiring. He never spared him-
self, and endured without a murmur the
severest privations on his repeated journeys.
From Southern India he went on to visit the
islands of the Chinese Archipelago, and even
got as far as Japan. He was above all am-
bitious to enter China itself, and in an at-
tempt to do so, died in an island off Canton
(1552).

The difficulties attending mass conversions
soon became obvious to the Jesuits, and one
of their number, Robert de Nobili, an Italian
(c. 1606), determined to proceed by other
methods, and to begin at the top and get

m MISSIONS

hold of the Brahmins themselves. He
adopted their dress and their habits, living
for a year in a grass hut on herbs and water.
In this way he aroused the curiosity of the
Brahmins, and they came to question and
talk with him, so that he was able to study
their religious ideas, and adapt his Christian
teaching to them. He wrapt his teaching in
the veil of mystery so attractive to the
Hindu mind, and wrote books in Tamil in
which he dwelt on the fundamental likeness
between Christian and Hindu beliefs. He
did not attempt to interfere with caste, and
tolerated the practice of many Hindu rites
by his converts. Finally he forged an an-
cient deed written in Indian character to
prove that the Jesuits were descended from
the god Brama. However blameworthy this
resort to deception as a foundation for his
authority may appear to us, there can be no
doubt about the zeal with which he and his
companions and successors laboured for the
conversion of the Indians. They trained up
a native priesthood; the districts under Por-
tuguese rule were organised into parishes, and
many churches were built. The acceptance
of the caste basis of society led them ulti-

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY 29

mately into many difficulties, and brought
about bitter disputes between the Jesuits and
other religious orders.

A little before Nobili began his work in
India, another Italian Jesuit, Father Ricci,
had penetrated with two companions into
China. A young man of twenty-seven when
he started on his great enterprise (1578),
Ricci set himself to study the character of
the Chinese that he might know how to win
their attention. He soon perceived that it
was useless to attempt to overcome the
prejudice against Christianity, arising from
the Chinese attitude of intellectual scorn
towards all foreigners, unless he could first
convince them of the superiority of Western
learning. He approached them, therefore, as
a man of learning rather than as a religious
teacher, adopted the dress of the Chinese
literati, mastered their language so perfectly
that he could not only discuss political
questions with learned Chinese, but could
write treatises which were admired by them
for their literary qualities. Especially he
impressed them by his mathematical and
astronomical knowledge. He translated
Euclid into Chinese, and made a map of the

30 MISSIONS

world by winch to correct some of the errors
of their ideas about geography. Welcomed
at last at the court at Pekin, he won the Em-
peror's confidence by his presents of a clock,
a repeating watch and some sacred paintings.
The Emperor and the learned Chinese now
treated Riccl and his companions with great
favour, and once the ground was prepared,
he used every opportunity to introduce
Christian teaching. Many converts were
made, churches were built even at the capital
itself. Ricci constantly implored that more
men should be sent him from Europe to help
in his great work. He laboured in China
himself till his death (1610), and other
Jesuits took up the work that he had begun.
Here in China, too, concessions were made
to native ideas by allowing the converts to
keep up the custom of ancestor worship,
connecting it with the worship of the saints
that prevailed in the Roman Church. This
and other concessions led later to dissensions
with Dominican missionaries, who invoked
the interference of the Pope, and these dis-
sensions destroyed the early prosperity of
the mission. The work was also periodic-
ally interrupted by persecutions which

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY SI

compelled the temporary retirement of the
missionaries.

In Japan also, the Jesuits and Franciscans
worked with success and made many converts.
It seemed as if Japan were about to become
a Christian land, for within a century there
were said to be a million converts. Then in
the early seventeenth century a change of
rulers led to a terrible persecution, in which
the Japanese were encouraged by the Dutch
traders, who resented bitterly the influence
of the Jesuits. Thousands of Japanese
Christians went bravely to meet a terrible
death, and the bright hopes of a Japanese
Church were crushed. For many generations
Japan was a sealed country, closed to the
outer world. When, more than 200 years
afterwards, Christian missionaries were again
tolerated in Japan, there were still found
some who practised secretly the Christian
rites, which had been kept alive all these
long years by those who hardly knew what
they meant.

Equal in devotion to the Jesuit mission-
aries in China and Japan were the French
missionaries who laboured in Further India
in the kingdoms of Siam, Tonquin and

32 MISSIONS

Cochin China* They were sent out by a
Society for Foreign Missions founded in
Paris in 1650. In the work of this society
and in the motives that inspired its sup-
porters, we see a curious mixture of genuine
religious zeal with a desire for the aggrandise-
ment of France and the extension of her
trade. The missionaries of these times had
to a large extent to win their way by acting
either as political agents or as traders, and
also in many cases to support themselves by
trade. Their voyages to the East had to be
accomplished on trading vessels, and on
overland journeys they travelled with trad-
ing caravans. This mixture of interests led
to international jealousies. The Portuguese,
who claimed jurisdiction over the whole of
the East, were constantly putting difficulties
in the way of the missionaries of other coun-
tries as well as in that of the Jesuits

Two men were the real founders of the
Paris Society, Frangois Pallu and de la Motte
Lambert. Both belonged to legal families.
Pallu from childhood had been dedicated to
the priesthood; de la Motte Lambert, a rich
and independent man, was a magistrate when
he decided to give up the world and become

THE SPREAD OF CHMSTIANTTY 33

a priest. To both after a while the mission-
ary call came clear and strong. De la Motte
Lambert, pertinacious and zealous in any-
thing he undertook, joined Pallu in getting the
Paris Society established and securing for its
objects the approval of the Pope. Both men
were appointed bishops that they might
superintend the spread of the Faith by the
Congregation of the Propaganda, the great
organisation in Rome which since its founda-
tion in 1622 directed all the missions of the
Church. The Portuguese considered the
appointment of these two bishops as an in-
terference with their ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion in the East; hence it was impossible for
the bishops to travel to Tonquin in Portu-
guese ships. De la Motte Lambert started
to make the journey by land. The directions
of the Propaganda were that he should go by
Persia, that he should dress as a Turk so as
to avoid recognition, that he should be care-
ful to interfere nowhere with politics, and
should teach and practise obedience to rulers.
He travelled partly by sea, in boats so
wretched that one of his companions said of
a sea passage that "to embark in such a
boat one must have made the sacrifice of

34 MISSIONS

one's life and have given one's fate into
God's hands"; partly by land, in company
with trade caravans. Wherever he came
across sick and suffering fellow-travellers,
he assisted them with such remedies as he
knew. At Ispahan and Bagdad he was
cheered by finding Capucin missions at
work, and in most of the ports some Chris-
tians were discovered. The journey took two
years. De la Motte Lambert never returned
to France. He spent his life in the Cochin
China mission. His courteous manners
helped to gain him influence with the native
rulers, and he ever showed himself fertile in
expedients and undaunted in difficulties.

Pallu, equally zealous and devoted, was
the statesman of the Mission. A man of
luminous and bold intelligence, he was full
of clear and wide views, which his vigour
and tact enabled him to carry into effect.
When he realised the impossibility of travel-
ling in Portuguese ships, he persuaded the
French ministers Mazarin and Colbert to
help him to found a French East India com-
pany, in the vessels of which the missionaries
were always allowed free passages. He
wished to extend the influence of France and

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTL4NITY So

to promote the interest of its trade, whilst he
spread the Faith in the East. Nothing
daunted him; when five out of the seven
missionaries he took with him died on the
way, he wrote: "We see the bridge begun,
only too happy if our bodies and those of
our dear brothers may serve as piles to
strengthen it, and to make a full open way
for brave missionaries to gather in an ample
harvest from such fertile fields."

His first object was to establish a seminary
to train native priests. Siam was then a
meeting-place for traders from all parts of
the world, and its king realised the advan-
tage of cultivating friendly relations with the
French. He was prepared, therefore, to be
tolerant to Christians, and granted the mis-
sionaries land for a college and a church.
The two bishops drew up rules full of wisdom
and insight for the guidance of their mission-
aries and of the native church. It was in
Tonquin that they displayed most activity.
One priest alone speaks of having baptised
2000 natives in two years. Periods of peace-
ful progress were followed by years of savage
persecution, in which both converts and
missionaries suffered unheard-of torments

36 MISSIONS

with the greatest heroism. Louis XTV, king
of France, showed great interest in the mis-
sion. He saw in it a way of increasing the
power and influence of France, and in the
whole work of the mission, political and
commercial interests played a great part,
side by side with the most genuine religious
devotion.

The native princes patronised the foreign
teachers when they thought it their interest
to do so, and some even visited Paris under
the care of the missionaries. Pallu made two
journeys back to France in the interests of
the mission, and laid before the king of
France his plans for founding trading fac-
tories in all parts of Cochin China. On his
journeys he sought opportunities of visiting
other missionaries and discussing their
methods of work with them. The route of
the trading vessels in which he travelled
lay past Cape Verd and round the Cape of
Good Hope to Madagascar, where there
were Dominican missions, and thence to
Macao. The time on ship was spent in
study and devotion and in ministering to the
spiritual and physical needs of the sailors.
Scurvy was then a terrible scourge; some-

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY 37

times the whole ship would be like a hospital,
but a hospital with no comforts or aids for
the sick. Then the missionaries would do all
in their power for the sufferers. At Macao
they had to disguise themselves and seek
means to cross undiscovered in native boats
to Cochin China or Canton, a voyage which
often took a month.

Pallu on one of his journeys was captured
by a Spanish ship and carried back to Spain
as a prisoner- He used the opportunity to
visit Rome and obtain from the Pope ap-
proval for his plans for the organisation of
the Church in the Far East. He brought
back with him to the East a band of new
missionaries. His great desire was to enter
China, and this he at last achieved, but only
to die there. His last words are a revelation
of the nature of the man. He bade his com-
panions remember that so long as love
reigned in the mission all would go well, and
then he recommended the mission to France,
pointing out the new alliances that might be
made and the great commercial openings
that were possible. He left behind him, as
the result of his untiring labours, the begin-
nings of a powerful ecclesiastical organisa-

38 MISSIONS

tion; there were seminaries for the training
of priests, convents to serve as a refuge for
the women and girls who were in danger of
being forced to marry heathens; in the vil-
lages there were placed elders or catechists
to gather the Christians together for worship
in the absence of the priests, who came at
stated intervals to dispense the sacraments.
Pallu's greatest contribution to the work of
missions was his insistence on the necessity
of training up a native clergy, which was ever
his first care in all his plans.

It is impossible to follow all the manifold
missions of the religious orders in the East,
or to tell the tale of their martyrs and con-
fessors, of their deeds of heroism and endur-
ance. The sufferings and tortures that many
of them endured are incredible. We read of
men first exposed naked to the bite of mos-
quitoes and then tied up in sacks and thrown
into the river; of fingers crushed between
planks, flesh torn out by hot pincers, till
the sufferers, giving thanks to God all the
time, fainted with agony. One priest, Gleyo,
after many tortures and scourgings, was cast
into a fetid prison where he lived for eight
years and then escaped. His bishop could

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY 39

hardly recognise the man, with the face of
a corpse, trembling hands and dying voice,
who appeared before him. He was only one
amongst many, and the heroism of the mis-
sionaries was equalled by the heroism of
their converts. Persecuted and driven out
of China and Tonquin, the one desire of the
missionaries was to find a way to return, to
live in hiding under the most wretched con-
ditions, that they might at least keep in
touch with their converts. Their courage
reaped its reward, for it was in lands like
Tonquin, where the persecution was most
severe, that Christianity took the deepest
root. But in the light of their great suc-
cesses and the wonderful promise of their
missions, which made it appear as if the
torhole of the East would speedily become
Christian, we are forced to ask what was the
reason of the failure of this promise.

Many things seem to have contributed to
this. Political motives, the love of power
and influence, constantly mingled with re-
ligious zeal. The missionary, absolutely self-
denying in his own life, was often ready to
push trade and commercial interests for
the good of his country, or even for the en-

40 MISSIONS

ricliment of Ms Order or the support of his
mission. He went too far in trying to ac-
commodate the Christian Faith to the ideas
and superstitions of the people amongst
whom he worked. Though wisely eager to
train up a native priesthood, he took little
pains to make his converts independent of
his rule. There was no attempt to build up
national churches; the Bible was not given
to the people, only such elements of the
Faith as were thought good for them; in
every detail the supremacy of Rome and
the authority of the Pope were asserted. Yet
though all the missionaries owed the same
obedience to Rome, their work was con-
stantly disturbed, not only by the aggressive
assertion of their rights by the Portuguese.,
but by jealousies and antagonisms between
the different religious orders. These came to
a climax when complaints against the Jesuits
were made to Rome on account of the tolera-
tion of heathen rites authorised by Ricci and
Nobili. A legate was sent from Rome to
China to investigate the matter (1701). The
legate, who was opposed at every step of his
proceedings by the Jesuits, died after great
sufferings* a prisoner at Macao, and the con-

THE SPREAD OP CHRISTIANITY 41

duct of the Jesuits In this matter showed the
autocratic nature of their pretensions. They
had indeed grown so powerful, that, founded
to aid the power of the Pope, it seemed as if
they had taken to themselves the rule of the
Church. Their arrogance raised up enemies
to their Order in every country and at last
led to their suppression by the Pope (1773).
This was a severe blow to the missions. At
the same time the revolutionary movement
in France disturbed the work of the Paris
Society, which provided and trained priests
for many of the missions, and for some years
no new missionaries could be sent out. But
the organisation of the East into vicariats,
dioceses and parishes, remained a framework
into which the work could afterwards be
again fitted.

The history of the Roman missions in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is full
of instruction for after times. The attempt
to adapt the Christian faith to the religious
ideas of the peoples was only a perversion oi
the truth now generally recognised, thai
there are great common ideas at the basis oi
all religions upon which the Christian teach-
ing can be built. The value attached to the

42 MISSIONS

formation of a native ministry was a begin-
ning of the recognition of the fact, that it is
the great aim of all wise mission work to
build up an independent native Church.
The attention given to the organisation
of the Church showed that statesmanlike
method of facing the whole situation, which
will alone prevent wasted and dispropor-
tionate effort. But most of all is to be
learnt from the lives of individual mission-
aries, from their courage and their single-
minded devotion, from their own endurance
of suffering, and from the spirit with which
they inspired their converts, so that they
gladly laid down their lives by hundreds in
persecutions as cruel and bloody as any
suffered in the worst days of the Roman
Empire. The life of many of the Jesuit
missionaries, their sufferings, their labours,
can be studied in the remarkable letters
which they sent home from their lifelong
exile, and which reveal clearly what manner
of men they were.

On the other side of the world, in North
America, the courage and devotion of the
Jesuits was equally shown. Here, in the
frozen lands of Canada, they laboured

THE SPREAD OF CHEISTIANITY 43

amongst the American Indians. These tribes
were living in a state of complete barbarism,
constantly on the verge of starvation, en-
gaged in desperate feuds with one another, a
prey to superstitious terrors, which were fed
by the sorcerers as a means of increasing
their power. They were by no means
friendly in their reception of the Black
Fathers, as the Jesuits were called, who
came to sacrifice their lives in bringing them
the knowledge of the true faith. The Jesuits
who gave themselves to the foreign missions
were amongst the most devoted and zealous
members of the Order. For the most part
men of gentle birth, cultured and highly
educated, they offered themselves gladly for
a life of desperate hardship. No tales of
heroism can surpass the unflinching devo-
tion of their lives amongst the Indians in
Canada. They followed the tribes to their
winter quarters, living amongst them in
their filthy huts, sharing their bitter priva-
tions, only to meet with revilings and in-
sults, sometimes driven half-starved and
frozen from every door, struck and spat
upon, their lives in danger at every moment,
and only saved because the Indians feared

44 MISSIONS

the vengeance of the French at Quebec. In
such a life their religion was their one sup-
port; comforted and sustained by heavenly
visions, they did not shrink from their task,
but were ever eager to press on into new
ventures. Even the most atrocious tor-
ments could not stop their zeal. One of
them, Bressani, fell into the hands of the
Iroquois, the most savage of the Indians;
after beating him till he was streaming with
blood, they stript him naked and, as he stood
shivering in the bitter cold, they forced him
to sing for their amusement. Then the
children were turned on to torment him,
summoned by the chief "to come and
caress" him, by thrusting sharp sticks into
his flesh and burning him with hot coals.
This was repeated for several evenings; later
he was hung up by his feet with chains, and
dogs were turned on to lacerate him. Some-
how he survived. "I could not have be-
lieved," he wrote, "that a man was so hard
to kill." Every day he expected his death,
but in the end, in his pitiably mangled con-
dition he was offered for sale to the traders
at a Dutch fort. They generously gave a
large sum for him, tended him and sent him

THE SPREAD OP CHRISTIANITY 45

back to France. Maimed and disfigured as
lie was, as soon as tie was able he returned
to his work amongst the Indians, ready
once more to face hardships and torments.

By every means the Jesuits sought oppor-
tunity to baptise the Indians, whether war-
riors dying in battle, prisoners bound to the
stake, or men and women on their death-
beds. They baptised infants by stealth on
pretence of giving them sweetened water to
drink. Their work was most successful
amongst the Hurons, and here they estab-
lished a large mission (1649) and built a
church which was the wonder of the Indians.
They made many converts, and by their
excellent management brought comparative
prosperity to the settlement, through grow-
ing maize and storing the food gained by
hunting and fishing, so that in the winter
hundreds of starving Indians would gather
round them to be fed. All this was destroyed
by a savage attack of the Iroquois, who
seized and tortured to death with the most
revolting cruelties two of the Jesuits. One
of these, Brebeuf , the founder of the mission,
a man of noble birth and heroic nature, sur-
vived for nearly seventeen hours of torture

46 MISSIONS

without flinching, so that "his death was the
astonishment of his murderers." It was said
that at times he seemed beside himself with
agony, and then with a mighty effort he
lifted up his hands and offered his sufferings
to heaven as a sacrifice.

It was the Iroquois, the most ferocious of
the Indians, who finally ruined the hopes of
the Jesuit mission, and with it the prospect
of making New France, the land of so many
hopes and dreams, fostered by the ambition
of Richelieu, and inspired by the zeal of the
Jesuits, a state strong, united, and pros-
perous, and able to resist the English colon-
ists, who were still but few and weak, living
along the shores of the New World.

CHAPTER III

THE REFORMATION AND THE BEGINNING
OF PROTESTANT MISSIONS

THE religious stir of the counter-reforma-
tion had kindled in the Roman Catholic
Church a new zeal for missions. But the re-
formation movement in Europe brought with
it no sense of obligation to carry the Gospel
to the non-Christian nations; indeed, the
leading reformers were even distinctly op-
posed to foreign missions. They stated that
the command to go and teach all nations
had been carried out by the Apostles, and
was no longer incumbent upon them. The
only voice raised on the other side was that
of Erasmus, who in a treatise on the Art of
Preaching speaks most eloquently of the
call to mission work. After describing the
countries of the world to which the Gospel
had never reached, he says: "There are

47

48 MISSIONS

surely in these vast tracts barbarous and
simple tribes who would easily be attracted
to Christ if we sent men among them to
sow the good seed." He goes on to speak
of the causes which kept men from this
task: want of faith, fear of difficulties, hard-
ships, and death, and concludes with an
urgent plea to men to address themselves
"with fearless minds to this glorious task."
"It is hard work I call you to," he writes,
"but it is the noblest and highest of all.
Would that God had accounted me worthy
to die in such a holy work. . . . No one is
fit to preach the gospel to the heathen who
has not made his mind superior to riches or
pleasure, aye, even to life and death itself."

The words of Erasmus met with no re-
sponse amongst the reformers. The few who
here and there tried to rouse any sense of
responsibility for the work of the conver-
sion of the world, met with the bitterest
hostility from the orthodox party in Ger-
many. Amongst the seafaring and colonis-
ing nations there was not wanting a convic-
tion that the explorers must carry the Gospel
with them. Instructions issued to navigators
in the name of Edward VI state that "the

THE REFORMATION 49

sowing of Christianity must be tlie chief
interest of such as shall make any attempt
at foreign discovery, or else what is builded
on other foundations shall never obtain
happy success or continuance. 5 ' Sir Walter
Raleigh was anxious for the introduction of
Christianity into his proposed colony of
Virginia, and 100 given by him for the prop-
agation of the Christian religion in that
colony, is the first recorded missionary sub-
scription in England. The Dutch, the
greatest colonising power of that day, sent
out clergy to the East Indies who were not
only to minister to their colonists, but to be
missionaries to the natives. The heathen
yielded to the pressure put upon them by
their new rulers and were baptised in masses
without any instruction, the preacher being
paid for each man baptised.

When the Pilgrim Fathers settled in North
America, they looked upon the conversion of
the Indians as their duty. One of the earliest
colonists, a minister, John Eliot (1604-1690),
by his devoted labours, earned for himself
the name of the Apostle of the Indians. He
studied their language and translated the
Bible into it. He established schools and

50 MISSIONS

settlements for the Indians, where they were
taught industries and agriculture. He was
wise and tolerant in his treatment of them,
and gentle with the children, for whom he
always carried little gifts in his deep pockets.
The Long Parliament, on learning of his
work, issued (1647) a manifesto in favour of
missions, and the first English Missionary
Society was founded in 1649 to support his
work. Cromwell himself made a compre-
hensive scheme for missions and for the
training of missionaries, but died before he
could carry it into execution. Individuals
felt the missionary call, but it was not till
the great spiritual awakening of the Pietist
movement in Germany, in the early eigh-
teenth century, that Protestantism was
roused to a sense of responsibility for the
condition of the heathen peoples. Slowly
the influence of the Pietists, men inspired
with zeal -for mission work both at home and
abroad, made itself felt, in spite of the bitter
opposition of the orthodox party. In 1722,
an orthodox preacher went so far as to con-
clude a sermon in which he had demon T
strated that missions were not necessary,
with the words: "Formerly it certainly was

THE REFORMATION 51

said: Go out into all the world, but now the
command is: Stay there where God has
placed you."

By degrees the influence of the Pietists
bore fruit. August Hermann Franke (1663-
1727), one of the foremost amongst them,
set himself to train men who should be ready
to go abroad as missionaries. It was to him
that Frederick IV, King of Denmark, turned,
when he was aroused to a sense of the needs
of the Danish Settlement in Southern India,
by the petition of a Danish woman, whose
husband had been murdered by the natives.
Franke sent him Ziegenbalg, the first Protes-
tant missionary to work in India. He died
at the age of thirty-six, but, before his death,
he had made 355 converts, founded schools,
made a Tamil dictionary and translated the
New Testament and part of the old into
Tamil. He was followed, some forty years
later (1749) by another Dane,. Christian
Schwartz, who gained great influence over
the famous Hyder Ali, Rajah of Mysore,
and spent nearly fifty years labouring
amongst the Indians without ever returning
to Europe. These early Protestant mission-
aries made the same mistake as the Jesuits

52 MISSIONS

through their too great eagerness. They
were far too quick to baptise their converts
and too ready to tolerate caste and other
Indian customs. After Schwartz's death,
many thousands of those whom he had con-
verted and baptised fell away again.

Count Zinzendorf, a young Austrian noble-
man, used frequently to visit Franke and to
talk with the missionaries whom he met at
his table. From his boyhood he was filled
with enthusiasm for missions and with desire
to help them. The way to do so came in an
unexpected manner. A band of fugitive
Moravians, who had fled from their country
because of religious persecution, begged for
shelter on his estates. By his permission,
these poor persecuted men and women were
enabled to build up a settlement which they
called Herrenhut; and Zinzendorf from the
first, by his intercourse with them, fired
them with zeal for missions. Two men were
sent (1732) to teach the slaves in the West
Indies, of whose wretched condition news
had reached Herrenhut, and two more went
to teach the Eskimos on the frozen and
savage coasts of Greenland. The Moravian
Church, which has never numbered more

THE REFORMATION 53

tlian 70,00(f members, holds a unique place.
It has from the first been a truly missionary
Church, every member feeling the compel-
ling obligation to further the cause of mis-
sions. It has sent out 2000 missionaries,
and, in its first twenty years of activity,
started more missions than the whole of
Protestantism had done in two centuries.
At the present day one out of every sixty
of its full members is a missionary.

Zinzendorf s restless energy led him to
start too many missions at once. Moravian
brethren and sisters were sent to every part
of the world, to the most desolate and bar-
barous lands. They were simple and reso-
lute men, often quite ignorant and unlearned,
but expecting no reward and living amongst
their people by the work of their own hands.
They feared no hardship, and went with
cheerful courage alike to the tropical forests
of South America and to the ice-bound
coasts of Greenland and Labrador. John
Beck laboured in Greenland (1735) for five
years, often on the verge of starvation,
amongst an inhospitable people, without
producing any result on their dull natures,
till one day, as he was preaching, a man,

54 MISSIONS

hearing the tale of the suBerings of Jesus,
was at last touched and cried out with
quivering voice: "How was that, tell me
once again, I too would be saved/* He was
the first fruit of the mission. There was no
organisation in the Moravian churches, and
they made no attempt to train a native pas-
torate, they laboured for the conversion of
individual souls. It was this want of any
statesmanlike view of the missionary problem
as a whole, which made the first efforts of
the Pietist missions produce results small in
comparison to the greatness of their devo-
tion. The wave of rationalism which swept
over Europe in the latter half of the seven-
teenth century, still further hindered the
growth of interest in missions.

In England there continued to be some
recognition of the duty to spread the Chris-
tian Faith in the new colonies in America.
A clergyman of the Church of England, Dr.
Bray, was the chief instigator of more active
measures* Moved by what he had seen of
the ignorance of the clergy at home, and of
the far greater ignorance of the few clergy
whom he found ministering in Maryland a he
induced the bishops and others to help him

THE REFORMATION 55

to found, In 1698, the Society for the Promo-
tion of Christian Knowledge, to provide
parish libraries and books for the clergy;
and, in 1701, the Society for the Propagation
of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, to organise
direct missionary work amongst the settlers
and native inhabitants of the new planta-
tions. The eighteenth century was not a
time of religious zeal; the imagination of the
Church was not fired by the sense of its great
opportunities, and the growth of the first
missionary society was slow. A few earnest
men laboured in America, but, in spite of
some feeble attempts, the Church there was
not allowed to grow in strength and inde-
pendence by the appointment of bishops of
its own, and it remained under the jurisdic-
tion of the Bishop of London till the war of
independence.

All the early trading and colonising ven-
tures of the English were alike carried on at
first with a pretence at least of a desire for
the conversion of the people amongst whom
they went. The East India Company pro-
vided each of their ships and their forts with
a chaplain, and some of these did what mis-
sion work they could amongst the natives in

56 MISSIONS

their neighbourhood; but the first Protestant
missionaries in India were Lutherans, Danes,
Germans, and Swedes, not English, who were
in part supported by the funds raised by the
English Church Societies. It was the evan-
gelical revival that at last aroused real mis-
sionary zeal in England, and led some men
at least to face the great missionary enter-
prise which must be the concern of every
living Church. Unfortunately the call, so
imperative on a great colonising nation like
the English, was not heard by the Church
of England as a whole, the problem was not
faced as one great question that was the con-
cern of all. In Germany, in the early eigh-
teenth century, the call had been heard and
responded to by individuals, and on that
account the work had lacked statesmanlike
direction and often failed in permanence.
In England, the enthusiasm of individuals
led to the formation of missionary societies,
and it is through societies that the Church
of England and other religious organisations
have since worked.

The English pioneer in the modern mis-
sionary movement was William Carey (1761-
1834), a poor shoemaker, who became a

THE REFORMATION 57

Baptist minister and, by constant study*
learnt Latin, Greek and Hebrew. As a
young minister of twenty-five lie ventured
to ask at the Baptist Conference whether
the command given to the Apostles to go
and teach all nations was not binding on us
also, and as a result was called "a miserable
enthusiast" by the president, who said
sternly: "Sit down, young man; when it
pleases God to convert the heathen, He will
do it without your help." Carey was not
daunted, but returned with fresh earnest-
ness to his studies. Six years later he
preached a missionary sermon to a gathering
of ministers at Nottingham* Its two lead-
ing thoughts were: "Expect great things
from God"; "Attempt great things for
God," and the sermon so moved some of his
hearers that twelve ministers combined to
form a Baptist Missionary Society, con-
tributing from their modest resources 13 %s.
6d. for its endowment. A year later Carey
himself sailed for India. Never was a mis-
sion begun with less prospect of success, and
yet Carey proved himself not only a pioneer
but a leader in missionary methods.

The East India Company, which, at its

58 MISSIONS

foundation, had professed a desire to spread
the Christian religion, now held different
ideas, and considered "the sending out of
missionaries into our Eastern possessions to
be the maddest, most extragavant, most
costly, most indefensible project which has
ever been suggested by a moonstruck fanatic.
Such a scheme is pernicious, imprudent,
useless, harmful, dangerous, profitless, fan-
tastic. It strikes against all reason and
sound policy, it brings the peace and safety
of our possessions into peril. 5 ' Carey was
not allowed to live in Calcutta and had to
settle in Serampore, under the Danish flag.
One of his principles was that a missionary
must maintain himself by the work of his
own hands, and in trying to do so at first, he
and his family were brought to the brink of
starvation. Then for a while, in order to
maintain himself, he became an indigo manu-
facturer, and whilst he worked at his busi-
ness he studied Bengali and Sanscrit. Three
other men were sent out to join him, and the
four missionaries, with their families, set-
tled at Serampore, where they shared a
house, living a sort of community life. They
set up a printing-press and schools, and sup-

THE REFORMATION 59

ported themselves by their teaching. They
allowed no trading for private gain, all that
they made was devoted to the work of the
mission.

For seven years Carey laboured without
making a convert, then he had the joy of
baptising a Hindu with his whole family,
and, in the following ten years, 300 con-
verts were made. His converts were always
taught to be evangelists, and sent out two
and two to preach. Meanwhile his schools
were constantly enlarged, and new missions
were started. His plan was to set up mis-
sion stations 200 miles apart, each to dis-
seminate literature and maintain itself by
trading or otherwise. He persisted in his
language studies, and when Lord Wellesley
started his college for the young servants of
the Company at Fort William, he appointed
Carey as teacher of Bengali. This appoint-
ment enabled Carey to extend his influence
to Calcutta and to earn more money for the
mission. Every moment that he could spare
was spent on translation. When he had
completed the translation of the Bible into
Bengali, he said that he still had translation
work planned for twenty years. From the

60 MISSIONS

press at Serampore there issued, in all, thirty-
six translations of the Bible. Four of these
were Carey's own, and all were more or less
superintended by him. It was he who first
made Bengali a written language, and thus
he was the father of all modern Bengali
literature. He could converse fluently in
Sanscrit with the Brahmins, and prepared a
grammar and began a dictionary in that
language. From the Serampore press the
first newspaper in any oriental language was
issued. After the mission had founded 126
native schools, Carey proceeded to found a
college at Serampore, where the students,
besides studying their own literature, might
learn English, and western science. A
Danish charter gave the college the right to
grant degrees, and Europeans as well as
Indians studied there, Carey spent forty-
one years in Bengal without going home,
and died at the age of seventy-three. His
life had been marked by many troubles. His
wife, who accompanied him to India, went
mad, and during all the early years of
struggle and privation he had the terrible
trial of the companionship of a mad woman.
He refreshed himself in his many labours by

THE REFORMATION 61

liis study of nature, and was a keen naturalist
and botanist. At Ms death he not only left
the Baptist Missionary Society well estab-
lished, but many other religious bodies had
been fired to imitation by the example of his
work.

In 1796, at the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland, it was proposed and
seconded that "to spread abroad the know-
ledge of the Gospel amongst barbarous and
heathen nations seems to be highly prepos-
terous . . . whilst there remains at home
a single individual without the means of
religious knowledge, to propagate it abroad
would be Improper and absurd." But a new
spirit was abroad. Men were helped by the
ideas of the French Revolution to begin to
feel stfme sense of the brotherhood of man,
and, at the same time, new interest in the
heathen world was aroused by the geograph-
ical discoveries of Captain Cook and others.
Commerce was ever making the world better
known, and the means of communication
were slowly improving. Liberty was in the
air, and the belief in the right of man to be
free helped the evangelical party in their
agitation against the slave trade. From the

6 MISSIONS

first, the anti-slavery movement and evan-
gelical missions were in close connexion, and
attracted the support of the same people.
But the official representatives of the Ang-
lican Church at the end of the eighteenth
century did not favour foreign missions.
They regarded them as extravagant, foolish,
and hopeless undertakings. So those whose
hearts had been awakened to hear the call
to spread the knowledge of the Gospel
amongst the heathen had to find their own
means for organising the work. Missionary
societies were founded in quick succession
by the different religious organisations; the
Church Missionary Society, the greatest of
all missionary societies in the extent of its
work and the vastness of its resources, in
1799, and the Bible Society, ever the hand-
maid of all missions in its great work of the
translation and dissemination of the Bible,
in 1804. By its means the Bible has been
translated in whole or in part into 400 lan-
guages. For the work of translation, a great
number of these languages have for the first
time been reduced to writing, and have had
grammars and dictionaries of them made by
the patient and arduous study of the mis-

THE REFORMATION 63

sionaries. It is a remarkable fact that
amongst the missionaries who have done
the most for linguistic study are some whose
previous life would not seem to have pre-
pared them in any way for such work; men
such as William Carey, who started life as a
poor cobbler in the Midlands, and Robert
Moflat, a Scotch gardener. It is probably
true to say that it has been by the agency of
missionaries alone that illiterate languages
have been reduced to writing.

In Germany, the enthusiasm for missions
which had grown up out of the Pietist move-
ment, languished under the influence of
rationalistic thought, except in the Moravian
Church. But missionary societies were
founded here and there, and did much good
work. When in 1885 German colonial
activity began, German Protestant missions
received again a strong, new impulse.

The American interest in foreign missions
began to show itself at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and has rapidly increased.
All European Protestant countries have their
own missionary societies, whilst the Roman
Catholic countries help to feed the great re-
ligious orders who send so many workers

64 MISSIONS

into the foreign mission field. To the Roman
Church all countries which are not Roman
Catholic are part of their mission field, and
it is not always easy to obtain accurate in-
formation as to the extent of their work
amongst non-Christian peoples, because they
include in their statements about their mis-
sions their work in Protestant countries. All
their mission work is under the control of the
Congregation of the Propaganda at Rome,
which has a great college for the training of
mission priests, and a printing-press for the
issue of the missionary publications of the
Roman Church.

The Orthodox Church has never taken a
large share in missionary work, outside its
own dominions. The Russians have many
missions in Siberia, and also a mission in
Japan.

To enumerate the existing missionary
societies would be impossible. There are
now some 338 complete societies, with many
others which assist them by collecting money
or in other ways.

CHAPTER IV

THE BEGINNING OF MODERN MISSIONS AND
THEIR RELATIONS TO GOVERNMENTS

THE religious movement which, brought
about the beginning of the enthusiasm for for-
eign missionary work in the early nineteenth
century was. for the most part outside the
regular organisation of the Church of Eng-
land. Hence it was that the Church as a
whole did not take up the work and that,
instead, the various missionary societies grew
up within the Church. To some this has
seemed an advantage because it has left to the
societies greater freedom and independence;
to others it seems nothing but loss that the
Church as a whole failed to recognize its
great responsibility at the first, and bring the
whole work so far as possible into co-ordination
and unity. The great majority of missionary
societies are denominational, and the divisions

65

66 MISSIONS

of Christendom at home have been introduced
into the mission field, to the great hin-
drance of the whole work.

At first the denominational differences were
not strongly marked in the missionary
enterprise. To a large extent it owed its
inspiration to the evangelical revival and to
the general humanitarian movement which
was closely allied with it. The same people
who felt pity for the sufferings of the un-
happy slave, felt pity for the ignorance of
the heathen savage, who, according to the
evangelical opinions of the time, would go to
hell unless he were converted, just as the
Roman missionary believed that he would
go to hell unless he were baptised. Pity was
the inspiring motive. But there was also
beginning to be some sense of responsibility
for the new lands, which were being opened
up for commerce and colonisation by the
great discoverers, who were making known
the hidden places of the world.

The thrilling tales of Captain Cook's voy-
ages aroused a special interest in the inhabi-
tants of the Pacific Islands, and it was to this
region that the London Missionary Society, a
society which included members of all reli-

MODERN MISSIONS 67

glons bodies, and desired to impose no one
form of church, government on its converts,
first directed its efforts (1799). The first
difficulty when the missionaries reached
Tahiti was to learn the language; it was the
earliest heathen language to be reduced to
writing, a task of great difficulty for un-
trained men. The man who finally trans-
lated the Bible in Tahiti was the son of a
bricklayer. For some years the missionaries
met with no success, but after eighteen years
not only were there large congregations of
Christians in Tahiti, but two thousand of
them attended a meeting to found a mission-
ary society to send teachers to other islands.
There was no ship to carry them, and the
missionary John Williams, who knew little of
shipbuilding and possessed hardly any tools,
set himself, with nothing but the help of the
natives, to build a ship of from seventy to
eighty tons, which carried him and two
Tahitan teachers to Fiji (1830). The inhabi-
tants of Fiji were given over to the most
bestial cannibalism, cannibalism inspired by
nothing but the most loathsome greed, which
would lead a man to kill his wife and eat her.
The pioneer missionaries were in constant

68 MISSIONS

danger. As late as 1867 one of them was
killed and eaten, but they did not falter in their
task. On one occasion, when a horrible canni-
bal feast was in progress during the absence of
the missionaries, their wives bravely went to
the rescue of two native women, and by the
mere force of their personal influence saved
them from being killed and eaten. Now
all is changed, the inhabitants of Fiji are all
nominally Christian, and some of the very
men who were themselves formerly cannibals
are now leaders amongst the Christians. The
results produced by the missionaries are
thus described by Charles Darwin. "They
had," he said, "abolished human sacrifices
and the power of an idolatrous priesthood, a
system of profligacy unparalleled in any part
of the world, and bloody wars, and had greatly
reduced dishonesty, intemperance and licen-
tiousness. " The piece of rock on which little
children were brained before being eaten has
now been turned into a Christian font. Fiji
possesses a native ministry, and it sends
teachers to other islands in the Pacific. The
attraction of these beautiful islands to traders
and others has brought many to them who
have interfered with the peaceful develop-

MODERN MISSIONS 69

ment of the child races which inhabit them,
and frequently the missionaries have suffered
for the crimes of the traders.

The first great name in African missions is
that of Robert Moffat, the Scotch gardener.
In his father's cottage home, Moffat read with
glowing interest the early tales of the Mora-
vian missions to the Eskimos. He felt the call
to offer himself as a missionary (1815) . There
was then much missionary enthusiasm in
evangelistic circles, and Moffat was told that
there were so many ready to go out that only
the most likely would be taken. He spent his
waiting time in further preparation. When
at last he was sent out to South Africa, he
found there some beginnings of missionary
work, but all in a most disorganized condition.
These early evangelical missions were very
individualistic in their methods, and Moffat
himself said that he had "a stout non-
conformist objection to the principles of
superintendency ; it was like putting the Pope
in new clothes." His first station was in
the village of Africaner, a chief in Griqua-
land, and a Christian convert. Before his
conversion, Africaner had been a fierce and
bloodthirsty man, the dread of the colonist

70 MISSIONS

and a price had been put on Ms head as
a rebel. Now, as a Christian, he helped
Moffat in all his work. He was constant at
prayers, a diligent student of the Bible, and
even helped to care for and wash the school
children. After a while, Moffat passed on
to Bechuanaland with his wife, who described
it as a miserable country, and the Bechuanas
as a people with no sense of spiritual things.
There was constant fighting between the
different tribes, and the missionaries were
often in danger. Moffat spent two months
quite alone amongst the natives in order
to get a real grasp of their language, and
then settled down to give it a literary form,
and to start a school. He and his wife
worked eleven years in gloom, with nothing
to cheer them. Then there came a sud-
den change. A wave of enthusiasm passed
over the natives, and they crowded the
little church. Moffat at first only baptised
six of those who professed themselves willing,
but the effects of the conversions were soon
shown in changed life and work. Later, he
pressed on to teach the savage Matabele, and
as he got acquainted with new tribes was
ever increasingly struck by the wretched con-

MODERN MISSIONS 71

dition of the heathen races, by their cruelty
and ferocity, and by their sufferings through
constant warfare and recurrent famines.
The immense change in the country to which
he and his wife gave their lives is largely the
result of the work which he began.

Another leader in Africa was Johann
Krapf, who began his work in Abyssinia in
1837, but a few years later settled with his
young wife as a missionary of the Church
Missionary Society at Mombasa, on the east
coast of Africa. There his wife and child
died, and he wrote home: "Tell our friends
at home that there is now on the East African
coast a lonely missionary grave; this is a sign
that you have commenced the struggle with
this part of the world." For two years he
lived alone, studying the Swahili language,
and thinking of the work to be done in Africa.
He longed to see a chain of mission stations
right across the continent, a settlement for
freed slaves on the eastern coast, and a black
bishop and black clergy to minister to the
people of Africa. When he was joined by a
fellow-missionary, he started a series of
remarkable journeys of exploration into the
interior of Africa, and by the tales of what he

72 MISSIONS

had seen and found helped to Induce otJier
explorers to plunge into the dark secrets of
the mysterious continent. Krapf's own aim
was always primarily the conversion of the
people. With this object he brought out a
vocabulary of six African languages, and his
visions of the work to be done in the future,
and of the means by which it might be accom-
plished, have been the inspiration of many
missionary endeavours. His dream of a
great chain of missionary stations across the
centre of Africa is still the object of desire for
those who understand best the nature of the
work to be done.

As Captain Cook's voyages in the previous
century had attracted the interest of his
fellow-countrymen to the Pacific, so did David
Livingstone's (1813-1873) reports of the spiri-
tual darkness of Africa and the horrors of
the Arab slave trade arouse attention to
the unknown interior of the dark continent.
Livingstone began life as a cotton-spinner in
a Scotch factory. Whilst there he spent his
evenings in study, and when he was nineteen
determined to devote his life to the "allevia-
tion of- human misery." He studied as a
doctor to prepare himself for the work of a

MODERN MISSIONS 73

missionary, and, attracted by the fame of
Moffat, went to Africa to aid Ms work. Sub-
sequently he married Moffat's daughter.
Livingstone was not the man to stay and work
steadily in one place. His astounding per-
severance and energy were directed to the task
of pressing constantly onwards to new regions
and to discovering new opportunities. As he
realized the vastnessof the task that lay before
the missionaries, he felt that it could only be
accomplished by native teachers. He himself
was, as it were, the herald of the Gospel; in
his own words, he wished "to let the good
seed be widely sown, and, no matter to what
sect the converts may belong, the harvest
will be glorious." It was his missionary
character, his method of dealing with the
natives, that enabled him to penetrate into
the very heart of Africa, and to establish
friendly relations with the tribes, whilst he
learnt their dialects and studied their country.
His was not a mind to dwell constantly on
the dark side of human nature, and instead
of allowing himself to be depressed by all
the evil and misery that he saw, he turned
his mind to the study of the wonders of
nature that surrounded him on every side.

74 MISSIONS

His discoveries, his careful observations,
earned for him the admiration of the men of
science of the day, and every mark of distinc-
tion was shown to him on the occasions of his
visits to London. But for him the great
object ever was to open ways into the heart of
Africa, that religion and civilisation might
put an end to the cruelties of the slave raiders
and the ignorance of the people. "I am tired
of discovery, " he said, "if no fruit follows it. "
His one wish was to help to heal what he
called "this open sore of the world"' the de-
vastating slave trade of Central Africa.
Speaking (1857) to the students at Oxford
and Cambridge, he said: "I go back to Africa
to try to make an open path for commerce
and Christianity: do you carry out the work
which I have begun, I leave it to you. " As a
result of his appeal the Universities Mission
to Central Africa was founded in 1861.

As Cook, Livingstone, Krapf and many
others opened out to the civilised world
unknown oceans and continents, the mission-
ary problem unfolded itself before the mind of
Christendom* The problem was threefold:
There was the call to evangelise the wide
non-Christian lands which were under the

MODERN MISSIONS 75

dominion of Christian powers, such as India
and the Dutch possessions in the East Indies,
Sumatra and other islands. There was the
call to minister to the spiritual needs of the
colonies in Canada, Australasia and South
Africa, and there was the call to carry the
Gospel to the vast heathen world outside the
direct influence of any Christian power. In
each of these three directions there were
special difficulties to overcome difficulties
which have prevailed till the present day.

The East India Company had long carried
on its operations in India with the sole view
of financial gain. It had even definitely
opposed missions to the Indian peoples.

The chaplains who were sent out to minister
to the English residents and troops in India,
sometimes tried to arouse interest in the
condition of the natives, and one of them,
Henry Martyn (1781-1812), by his devoted
labours at translation and the establishment
of schools, joined with his saintly life, pro-
duced an impression upon the minds of his
fellow-countrymen, which won him a place
amongst missionary heroes, though he died at
the early age of thirty-one. In 1813 the
Charter of the East India Company had to be

76 MISSIONS

revised, and Wilberforce, wlio Lad fought so
persistently for the freedom of the slave, with
the help of other like-minded men, roused
public opinion and, after an eloquent appeal
in Parliament, carried a motion allowing mis-
sionaries to proceed to India without hind-
rance. When, after the mutiny, the govern-
ment was taken out of the hands of the Com-
pany, the proclamation by which Queen
Victoria declared India to be part of the
British Empire (1858) stated the principle of
religious neutrality, under which the govern-
ment of India has since been carried on.
"Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of
Christianity, and acknowledging with grati-
tude the solace of religion, we disclaim alike
the right and the desire to impose our con-
victions on any of our subjects." The fact
that a Christian government has never in any
way favoured the Christian religion has of
course often been misunderstood by non-
Christians, and has seemed at times to put
hindrances to the progress of Christianity, but
all thinking men are convinced that the gain
has been greater than the loss, since the policy
of complete neutrality has absolutely disso-
ciated religion from politics. The Indian

MODERN MISSIONS 77

government has always been ready to recog-
nise the great work done by the Christian
missions for education.

In some other lands under the British rule,
the desire to avoid friction by preserving
religious neutrality has not worked so satis-
factorily as in India, and especially has this
been the case in Moslem lands. The fear
of provoking Moslem fanaticism in Egypt,
the Soudan and Nigeria has led in many
cases to a policy which is really anything but
neutral, and can fairly be described as open
partisanship of Islam. The methods of
the officials in Northern Nigeria lead the
natives to believe that the best thing they
can do is to become Moslems, otherwise
they will get no road-making or other work
under Government. A missionary in North-
ern Nigeria is not allowed by a Christian
Governor to enter a city without the per-
mission of the Mohammedan Emir. Traders
may go where missionaries are not allowed to
go. In Egypt, the Moslem Friday, but not
the Christian Sunday, is allowed to be kept
as a holiday by those filling Government
posts. The difficulties, exceptionally great
in themselves, of working in a Moslem court-

78 MISSIONS

try, are increased In every way by the fact
that the neutrality which the Government
professes to show is very far from being the
real neutrality that prevails in India.

In the Dutch colonies of Java and Sumatra
and other islands of the far East, the Gov-
ernment has always aimed at a policy of re-
ligious neutrality, but this has not prevented
it from helping the schools and hospitals of
the missions, and showing in various ways
that it does feel responsibility for the re-
ligious welfare of the people. It has approved
of the appointment by the missionary socie-
ties of a Missions-Consul, who acts as inter-
mediary between the Government and the
missionaries. He has no definite authority,
but as a man on the spot, who has the in-
terests of all the missions thoroughly at
heart, he has proved to be most useful to all
parties so that, according to the testimony
of an experienced missionary, "already one
wonders how one ever got on without the
Missions-Consul/'

Some of the severest difficulties put in the
way of missions by the Governments of
European countries have been experienced
in the last few years. In Madagascar, the

MODERN MISSIONS 70

French Government, tinder the administra-
tion of a Governor of f ree-tMnking ideas, has
proved extremely hostile to the work of the
missions. It has interfered with their schools,
stopped much of the civilising work they were
doing for the natives, and hampered them in
every way by vexatious restrictions. Its
conduct has seemed to be absolutely con-
trary to those principles of liberty and
equality which it has been the glory of the
French people to uphold.

In the Belgian Congo it is not only the
work of the missions but the well-being, the
very life of the unhappy natives that have
been in danger through the brutal adminis-
tration of the European officials. Mutilation,
murder, rape and unutterable outrages were
the lot of the people, and it was only the
voice of the missionaries that drew the atten-
tion of the world to the horrors that were
being perpetrated.

It is the universal policy of missions to be
loyal and to teach loyalty to existing Gov-
ernments. Only in dire necessity do mis-
sionaries make complaint, and then rather
on account of the treatment accorded to
their people than to themselves. They only

80 MISSIONS

ask for liberty to carry on their work; they
do not ask for any protection different from
that accorded to others, neither do they, in
the very great majority of cases, claim com-
pensation for damages inflicted on their
property. In the few cases where this has
been done, it has been c u arly shown that the
estimation in which they were held by the
natives suffered from their apparent alliance
with the ruling power. But missionaries
ask that religious neutrality should be a
reality, and they have again and again come
forward as advocates for their people against
those who would destroy all possibility of
their peaceful progress by the introduction
of the liquor or the opium traffic, or of any
system of forced labour, or by the unjust
appropriation of their lands.

Missionaries have especially been called
upon to defend the rights of the natives in
those lands where white men have settled.
When the Hudson Bay Company first estab-
lished its forts for the fur trade in Northern
Canada, the Company had not the slightest
desire to promote the conversion of the
Indians. They treated them as incapable of
civilisation, and only used them for their own

MODERN MISSIONS 8j

purposes. In other parts of North America
the efforts of the missionaries were constantly
hindered by the land-grabbing of the colon-
ists, and their utter disregard of the rights of
the native population. The same was the
case in Australia and New Zealand. In South
Africa the difficulties found in other colonies
were increased by the mixture of races, white
as well as coloured. The Boers, the Dutch
settlers, were never eager for the conversion
or education of the natives in their colonies.
They had taken the lands of the Kafirs and
reduced their owners to slavery, and even
when under British rule they were forced to
abolish slavery, they believed that the Kafirs
would work better for them if left uncon-
verted and in ignorance, We hear (1850) of
a Dutch minister asking to be received into
the English Church because of his dissatis-
faction with his own Church on account of
its neglect of the coloured people. The white
settlers, both Dutch and English, were
themselves at first left with very little re-
ligious ministration. Bishop Gray wrote
(1850): "These poor Kafirs have been nur-
tured amidst war and rapine, and have been
in deadly conflict with us from childhood;

m MISSIONS

the greater number of Europeans with whom
they have mixed, and do mix, have not sought
to do them good, but have let them see that
they despise them, and regard them as no
better than dogs, and it is we who have taught
them to drink/' Up and down the country
many hundreds of Englishmen were settled,
living without God in the world, bringing
misery upon themselves and discredit upon
all Englishmen by their lives. The discovery
of the diamond mines and of the mineral
wealth of the country only added to the diffi-
culties, for native labour was imperatively
needed, and men who cared more about
growing rich than for the well-being of the
natives, opposed the efforts to convert and
educate them, for fear that it would then be
less easy to get them to work.

In non-Christian lands the dangers and
difficulties of missionary work differ much
according to the nature of the people, but
every land has provided its martyrs and
confessors. From the earliest days, mission-
aries of all religious denominations have
faced dangers amongst cruel and barbarous
peoples, and the equally great risks from the
rigours of Arctic cold or tropical heat, with

MODERN MISSIONS 88

simple and uncomplaining courage. They
have learned that it does not help their
cause to throw away life needlessly, and ex-
perience and increasing medical knowledge
have helped them to preserve health and
power to work in dangerous climates, by
submitting to wise precautions. But courage
and self-sacrifice have not grown less because*
where possible, they are allied with prudence
for the work's sake. A greater difficulty to
the missionary's cause than either barbarism
or climate arises from the conduct of the
white trader, who finds his way for profit
into almost every land. The ignorant
heathen judge the religion of the white man
as much by the life of the trader as by the
life of the missionary, and where the trader
goes the liquor trade also goes. The intro-
duction of spirits has been the ruin of many
native tribes. It is the deterioration of the
coloured man under the approach of civilisa-
tion that makes so many superficial observers
speak contemptuously of the result of mis-
sions. The poor degraded native ruined by
the white man's spirits may have been at
a mission school and may call himself a
Christian, but it is not the mission school

84 MISSIONS

that ruined him. Those who like to romance
about the noble savage in his untouched con-
dition must remember that the opening-up
of the world to trade has made it impossible,
even if it were desirable, to leave the savage
untouched.

Another difficulty with regard to missions
in non-Christian lands arises from inter-
national jealousies. This has especially been
the case in the past, when the missionary was
apt to be regarded as, and often was in a
greater or less degree, the agent of the power
behind him. In the present day, increasing
sympathy and co-operation between the mis-
sions of different nations may be expected to
bring greater harmony even into interna-
tional relations, but jealousy with regard to
the influence that may be won through mis-
sions is not altogether a thing of the past.

When we consider the immensity and the
complexity of the missionary task undeir all
these varied conditions and amidst these
many difficulties, there can be no wonder
that progress has not been more rapid. But
more disastrous than all the difficulties that
have been mentioned is the fact that it is no
united Church that has to face the tremen-

MODERN MISSIONS 85

dous task, but a Church divided and rent
asunder into bodies often conflicting and
sometimes bitterly hostile. Hence the task
as a whole has never been looked at in a
statesmanlike manner. Efforts to grapple
with it, however earnest and devoted, have
been isolated. In some countries there has
been much overlapping and conflicting work,
whilst vast regions are still totally unoccu-
pied, or only most sparsely occupied, by
missions. There is at present> on the whole,
increasing co-operation amongst Protestant
missions, but the Roman Church still stands
loftily aloof, though in the mission field in-
dividual priests often show kindliness and
friendliness to other missionaries. The diffi-
culty is increased because the Propaganda
considers missions in Protestant countries
to be just as much part of its work as mis-
sions to non-Christians, whilst some Protes-
tant bodies send missions to the Roman
Catholic natives in the West Indies and
South America on the plea that they are in
such a condition of ignorance and supersti-
tion as to be hardly worthy of the name of
Christians. To most of those who long for
unity in the great enterprise of missions it

86 MISSIONS

seems wisest to use all practicable means of
co-operation, but to hesitate to put forward
for the present any scheme, whether practical
or theoretical, for unity. The spirit and
practice of unity must take precedence over
any organised effort.

But in spite of the immense difficulties of
the task, in spite of the disastrous want of
unity, in spite of much paralysing coldness in
the attitude of the Church at home to foreign
missions, the progress of the last hundred
years has been remarkable progress not
only in the results attained, but in the
methods employed and the general interest
in the work. When the Church Missionary
Society was first started in 1799, they could
find no Englishmen willing to go out as mis-
sionaries, and the first two men they sent
out were German Lutherans; they now have
a total of 1360 missionaries, men and women,
at work. Other societies show similar prog-
ress. The last census in India recorded a
larger increase in the number of Christians
than ever before. The total increase of the
population has been 6A per cent., but the
increase of the Christians has been 11.6 per
cent., and there are now nearly four million

MODERN MISSIONS 87

Christians in India. In Korea, in 1887
there were seven native Christians now
there are close upon 400,000. These facts,
taken at random, give some idea of the
progress throughout the world.

CHAPTER V

METHODS OF MISSION WOEK AMONGST

NON-CHKISTIAN PEOPLES

THE most obvious missionary method is
tlie preaching of the Gospel at the street
corner, in the bazaar, in the centre of the
village; in China often in a simple street
chapel, hung with maps and pictures, which
always stands open to any comer. Often
the preaching may go on for years without
any result. Generally, in time, a small body
of inquirers will gather round the teacher.
Their motives may be only the desire for
some personal advantage; and in practically
all missions careful instruction and a period
of testing precedes baptism. Preaching is
also carried on in connexion with the itinerat-
ing mission doctors, to the crowds who
gather in the villages in search of healing
from their bodily pains, and in the wards
and waiting-rooms of the mission hospitals.

88

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 89

As was natural, many mistakes in the
nature of the preaching were made at first.
Even when the difficulties, in many cases
almost insuperable, of the language were
overcome, the missionary would be some-
times inclined to give the Gospel message
with little knowledge or sympathetic under-
standing of the religious ideas of his hearers,
and in most cases he imposed upon them not
only the Christian teaching, but the theology
and the ecclesiastical ideas which had grown
up in Europe to meet the needs of European
thought and conditions. Experience, the
study of non-Christian religions, the deeper
understanding of missionary problems, has
led by degrees to more enlightened methods.
The native evangelist was soon seen to be
the best fitted to teach the poor and ignorant
amongst his own countrymen, and his proper
equipment for the task is now felt to be the
most urgent need. At the same time it is
recognised that amongst almost every people
there exists some preparation for the Gospel
that is everywhere the spiritual needs of
the human soul that have produced the re-
ligions of the East and of the Animist peo-
ples, and that the task of the missionary is

90 MISSIONS

to show how the teaching that he brings
corresponds to those needs, and includes in
itself what is true and permanent in the re-
ligious ideas which he finds amongst his
hearers. The missionary's own attitude has
changed. Pity for dark ignorance and cruel
suffering is still there, but it is not the only
motive that animates him. He feels that
these people, too, have their contribution to
bring, and that the fullness of the Christian
message will not be realised till the great
nations of the East and even the Animist
peoples of Africa and the Pacific have en-
riched it with their religious ideas and their
way of holding and exhibiting the truth.
Through Ms converts his own faith is
strengthened, and his own conception of
Christian truth enlarged.

A missionary in China writes: "The par-
ticular tenets of my own Church are falling
into the background in view of man's need
of Christ. The Kingdom of God is greater
than any Church, and Christianity than any
creed." And another from India: "I have
increasingly felt that my concern as a Chris-
tian missionary is not with Christianity as
a religious system* but with the presenta-

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 91

tion of the Personality of Christ as the
supreme revelation of the redeeming love of
God. This is the one Gospel that India
needs. I am far from thinking a theological
system useless, but I feel strongly that no
attempt should be made to impose on
Eastern Christianity any theological system
worked out by Western theologians. East-
ern theology, in my judgment, will be more
on the lines of the Gospel of St. John than
the Epistle to the Romans." And yet an-
other: "The New Testament reads like a
new book with regard to the great critical
question here in India of racial unity within
the Church. The history of the Apostolic
Age, the foundation of Catholic as opposed
to Judaic Christianity, the life struggle of
the Apostle Paul for racial unity and brother-
hood on terms of equality and freedom all
this has gained a vividness and a colour and
a glory which have made, as I have said, the
New Testament a new book to me. M

When it is said that the first duty of the
missionary is to study sympathetically the
religion of the people amongst whom he
labours, and to look carefully for its good
points, this does not mean that he is to

92 MISSIONS

repeat the error of the early Jesuit mission-
aries in China and India, and tone down the
Christian teaching, and try to make it suit-
able to the people by adopting some of their
prejudices; but that a sympathetic under-
standing of their point of view should help
him to bring out what in Christian truth
they specially stand in need of, and also to
show them how all that is dear to them need
not be cast away, by striving to connect
what is true in their religious conceptions
with the Christian revelation.

To the Animist, who is a constant prey to
superstitious terror because he believes that
the world is peopled with spirits who are
envious of the living, and who, unless pro-
pitiated, will strike them with disease or
calamity, the teaching of the unity and om-
nipotence of God comes as a joyful deliver-
ance. To learn that God is love completes
his happy sense of glad and free life. In
China, where ancestral faiths are losing their
hold before the inrush of western civilisation
it would seem that the traditional morality,
which has been the source of the strength of
China, must disappear, and the whole land
be given over to materialism unless, through

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 93

Christian teaching, her people can leam that
the spiritual need, which they have tried to
satisfy by ancestor worship, can find its full
satisfaction only in Him who is the Father
of all spirits.

In India, as he is confronted with Hindu
philosophic thought, the missionary is re-
minded of the first contact between Chris-
tianity and Hellenism in the schools of Alex-
andria. It is said by one who has studied
the question that "the history of India is
one long proof of the inadequacy of Pan-
theism to meet not only the religious, but
the moral and social needs of man; . . . the
manifold ills of Indian life, the immense out-
growth of mendicant asceticism, the petri-
fication of society in the caste system, the
abuse of child marriage, and the manifest
hardships of widowhood can all be traced to
the same deep root as that which is manifest
in all the infamies of popular idolatry the
defective conception of God, the turning
away of the human heart from its Father in
mistrust and in fear." Yet in the "immem-
orial thoughts of India there lie hidden
profound and vital truths." Amongst the
missionaries now labouring there are many

94 MISSIONS

who, whilst absolutely convinced of the evils
of Hinduism, yet show a "generous and pro-
found appreciation of that in it which is true
and eternal/* They are convinced both that
"the religion which they are seeking to dis-
place is a revelation of deep wants of the
human spirit/' and "that the Gospel con-
tains the answer to these wants, and that
they must find the answer/' "convictions
which are essentially the same as those
which animated the minds of the Apostles
and their successors." It is being realised
that things lie hidden in the Gospel teaching
which will not be fully brought out until the
Hindu shows that through it he can at last
satisfy that unresting desire for unity with
God which has tormented him through the
ages.

The above quotations are taken from evi-
dence collected from a very large number
of missionaries of all denominations, for a
report presented to the great Missionary
Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910. It is
encouraging to note that all unite in believ-
ing the true missionary method to be that of
knowledge and charity, and hold that "the
missionary should seek for the nobler ele-

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 95

ments in the non-Christian religions and use
them as steps to higher things/' that "in fact
all these religions, without exception, dis-
close elemental needs of the human souls
which Christianity alone can satisfy, and
that in their higher forms they plainly mani-
fest the working of the spirit of God. On all
hands the merely iconoclastic attitude is
condemned as radically unwise and unjust."
At the same time these men show clearly
that "it is precisely because of their convic-
tion as to the absoluteness of Christianity
of their belief that Jesus Christ fulfils and
supersedes all other religions, that they find
it possible to take this more generous view
of the non-Christian religions.^

Almost from the first it was found neces-
sary to combine educational work with the
evangelistic work of missions. This was im-
perative if a native ministry were to be built
up, and also as a means of opening out dull
minds and preparing the soil for the new
teaching. The nature and effect of this
educational work must, of course, be very
different in the more civilised countries of
the far East from what it is amongst the
backward races. In the East, even when

96 MISSIONS

definite conversions liave not followed, mis-
sionary schools and colleges have made
Christian thought and morals permeate the
ideals and aspirations of the peoples, and so
have prepared the way for a general accept-
ance of Christianity.

In India, nothing has more impressed the
high-caste native with the power of Chris-
tianity than the way in which, by education,
the missionaries have been able to raise the
lowest castes, even the outcasts of the com-
munity. In South India, Brahmins will send
their children to schools where they are
taught by low-caste men. Yet, it would be a
mistake to assume that education alone can
be expected to remove the almost insuper-
able difficulties placed in the way of progress
by the caste system. It is the worst enemy
of Christianity, and it is so deeply rooted in
the Hindu mind that its prejudices survive
even conversion to Christianity, so that
missionaries have again and again been
tempted to ignore it, or even to recognise it.
In South India, where caste is strongest, to
this day the Roman Catholics have separate
churches for the caste people and the out-
casts. There would seem to be no other

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 97

course for the Christian Church to take than
to refuse to recognise caste in any form, other-
wise it will continue to survive within the
Church itself.

It Is through the schools and through the
intimate relations there built up between
pupils and teachers, that prejudices and
misconceptions have been most easily re-
moved. By the schools, the missionaries get
access even to the homes of the people; the
strong attachment which grows up between
pupil and teacher makes the minds of the
pupils accessible to Christian preaching in
after-life.

Special difficulties have attended the de-
velopment of the mission schools. The mis-
sionaries In the past were seldom men with
any educational training, and yet they were
soon compelled to face the most difficult
educational problems. They had to train
their assistant teachers, to determine the
curricula of the schools, and above all to
decide on the weighty problem of the place
to be taken In the schools by the vernacular
and by the national classics in countries like
India and China. The pioneer of higher edu-
cation in India was Dr. Duff (1806-1878)

98 MISSIONS

the first missionary sent out by the Church
of Scotland. In his college the Bible was to
be read and expounded daily, but every form
of useful knowledge, up to the highest uni-
versity studies, was also to be taught there.
His view was that the higher subjects should
be taught in English, and that through the
English language the students should be in-
troduced to Western science and literature,
whilst in the primary schools the vernacular
should be used. The educational policy
pursued by Government was largely framed
in consultation with him, and his plan of
teaching the Bible to all the pupils has been
followed in the schools belonging to missions.
His success was striking. In 1840 there were
800 pupils at his school, in 1844, 1,257. Some
of his leading students, Brahmins and Mo-
hammedans, were converted and baptized;
others were imprisoned by their fathers to
prevent their baptism. A storm of indigna-
tion amongst the Bengalese followed the
conversions, and any conversion led to a
sudden drop in the number of pupils, which,
however, speedily rose again when a little
time had passed. Many of the most re-
markable Indian Christians were trained by

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 99

Mm. The distinguislied son of one of Ms
converts. Dr. Rudra, is now Principal of the
college belonging to the Cambridge Mis-
sion at DelM, one of the leading colleges in
North India, and under Mm Oxford and
Cambridge graduates are working as tutors
and professors.

The honourable and important part played
by missions in the education of the people of
India is gladly recognised by government
reports. Of late there has been a growing
opinion that education in India is too western
in character, and that it has not been
sufficiently adapted to suit national needs.
Students are freed from their old religious
and social restraints, and are, owing to the
non-religious nature of the state schools,
given nothing in exchange, so that they are
left, in Sir William Hunter's words, "without
discipline, without contentment, and without
God." Mission schools and colleges in order
to obtain the government grant are obliged
to follow the government curriculum, but it
is in some mission schools that the most en-
lightened attempts are being made to give
a sounder education, and to aim at making
the students good Indian citizens. By games

100 MISSIONS

and athletics, the boys are taught to be
manly and courageous, the study of their
own history and literature is encouraged,
and though in the upper classes, and es-
pecially in scientific subjects, the teaching
is conducted in English, the vernacular is
not neglected. Both in India and China it
is increasingly the practice of missionaries
to give religious and Bible teaching in the
vernacular, so that it may always be con-
nected with the most intimate thoughts of
the student's heart.

In China the part played by the missions
in educational work is fully as important as
in India, though of a different nature. China
has always believed in education, and pro-
motion in the State was in the past entirely
decided by examinations. But with the
sudden awakening of China in the last few
years, all the old educational methods have
been swept away, the system of examina-
tions has been abolished, and the great ex-
amination halls are falling into ruin. The
doors are open wide for western learning.
In every possible way the missions are co-
operating with the efforts of the Chinese
Government to spread education throughout

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 101

the whole country. They wish to show in
their schools and colleges examples of the
highest type of education, and not only to
provide Christian schools for their own
converts, but to train up Christian teachers
to work in the government schools and ex-
ercise there a Christian influence. The situa-
tion in China is felt to be specially urgent,
and to demand the help of the best possible
missionary educationalists in building up
the educational system of the new China.

In Japan and in many parts of India and
China, the best way in which the missions
can help in education is" by establishing
hostels, where * the students at the govern-
ment colleges can live, and there continuing
the Christian training of their own people,
and also providing a safe place in which
students can live.

The educational work amongst the back-
ward races, very different in kind, is equal in
importance to that in the East. The pioneer
missionaries found it to be one of their most
necessary tasks to reduce the native lan-
guages to writing, to set up printing-presses,
to teach the people to read and write if they
were to produce any permanent effect upon

10 v MISSIONS,

them. If a native church was to grow up,
native teachers and preachers were needed,
and for this purpose the most promising lads
were picked out and educated. Amongst
the islands of the Pacific, the plan was to
collect likely youths from the different
islands, who were willing to come to learn at
some central school. They were fetched to
the mission station in a steamer, and taken
home from time to time for holidays. In
Africa, industrial schools have proved es-
pecially useful to train the natives in habits
of industry and to induce them to lead
settled lives. The natives have in most
cases been eager for education, seeing in it
the source of the white man's power, and
the chiefs have begged that teachers should
be sent to their villages. Every one who has
had to do with the African native feels the
necessity of teaching him industries and
habits of work. Already in 1856 Livingstone
wrote: "We ought to encourage the Africans
to cultivate for our markets as the most
effectual means next to the Gospel for their
elevation."

A missionary of the Scottish Mission at
Blantyre in Nyassal and, says : " The difference

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 103

between the native village where there Is a
school built by the people themselves for their
own use and their children's, and a village
where there Is no such educational oppor-
tunity Is at once manifest to the visitor. In
the former case the people show a new in-
terest in their life . . . even a mere alphabet
class is a fresh development in the life of the
village community, and makes for discipline
among the inhabitants. 95 The severest critics
of missions amongst the African natives are
prepared to recognise the good work done
by industrial missions, and by any form of
training which teaches the black man to work.
From the earliest days missionaries have
tried to show their love and pity for the people
amongst whom they went by ministering to
their bodies as well as to their souls. Where-
ever the missionary went, the people crowded
round him for the sake of such simple reme-
dies as he carried with him. But it is only
within the last fifty years that the value of
medical missions has been thoroughly appre-
ciated. In 1876 the largest English Mission-
ary Society had only three doctors as mission-
aries, now it has ninety-three and seventy-
three nurses. Progress at a similar rate has

104 MISSIONS

been made by many other societies, and well-
equipped hospitals where native doctors and
nurses can be trained have been established,
as well as small village hospitals. Itinerating
doctors who go from village to village are also
proving to be one of the most effectual of
missionary methods. The medical mission-
ary is welcomed wherever he goes, people
come to him, he does not need to seek them,
he can get into places which would be closed
to any one else. All along the north-west
frontier of India there are districts and
countries such as Afghanistan closed to all
mission work; but here within the British
border have been planted a series of medical
missions to which the wild men of the hill
tribes and the fierce Afghans and Pathans
come for healing from their distant homes
in the mountains. Scattered throughout large
districts, they spread on their return home the
tale of the care and kindness that has been
shown them, and so at least help to disarm
hostility to Christianity and to prepare the
way for it. The medical missionary as he
travels afterwards amongst the villages is
greeted with joy by many former patients,
who with their grateful friends seek to do

METHODS OP MISSION WORK 105

Mm honour In every way they can devise.
He gets opportunities of preaching the
Gospel such as fall to no one else. One
medical missionary writes: "Often while in
camp, I have been surrounded by patients
from morning to eve, drawn from all the
countryside, and my associates and I could
preach to them as long as we desired." In
the loving work of the doctor, the most
ignorant can see something of the meaning
of the Christian message, and can recognize
in him a representative of the Great Physician
alike of soul and body. A bond of true
sympathy is set up, which is able to get over
the separations of creed and colour, and
ignorant terrors and prejudices are dispelled.
The hospital at the mission centre exercises
the same attractive force as the itinerating
doctor. People will come to it for medical
treatment when nothing else would draw
them to the mission. Many beside the patient
are influenced by the work and life of the
hospital, since to suit the customs of the
people, friends and relatives have to be freely
admitted and allowed even to live within the
hospital precincts. The friends of the patients
carry far and wide the accounts of what they

106 MISSIONS

have seen at the hospital, and the example
of the unselfish, devoted lives o doctors and
nurses has a powerful effect. In many cases,
especially in China, a leper asylum is attached
to the hospital. Until the missionaries came
there was no one to care for the lepers. Blind,
lame, crippled, covered with sores, they lived
as outcasts without a hope and without a
home. Now, sometimes in leper villages,
sometimes in homes or hospitals, they are
tended with loving care by missionary doctors
and nurses. The leper hospitals and villages
are always described as happy places, where
the children are taught and the patients
learn to help and care for one another, and
many find hope and consolation in their
sufferings and lingering death through faith
in Christ. Those who are fit for it are taught
to work, and they build with their own hands
their houses and churches, and tend the
gardens of the settlement. The Bishop of
Carpentaria, after a visit to the leper settle-
ment on Friday Island, where Chinese, South
Sea Islanders and Australian Aboriginals are
gathered, writes: "It was a touching sight
to see the fifteen communicants, kneeling
under the shade of a big tree, manifesting

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 107

the deepest reverence as they received the
bread into their sometimes fingerless hands,
or drank the wine with their poor distorted
mouths/* Some missionary doctors are try-
ing in China to secure better treatment for
the insane. The Chinese method was found
to be to fasten them up with chains, expose
them to all weathers, or smother them.
The doctors do not forget the educational
side of their work, and do all in their power
to train native doctors and persuade native
governments to provide hospitals or to help
in supporting the mission hospitals. One
of them writes: "I shall not rest content till
China herself comes to the rescue of her sick,
her insane and her outcast lepers."

The care of orphans has from the earliest
times been part of the work of missions.
In China and certain parts of India, girl
babies, little desired in a family, used often
to be, and sometimes still are, thrown away
to perish. To rescue these poor outcasts
was the favourite work of the nuns who
went out to the early Roman Catholic
missions in China. In India the different
missions have gathered in the children
who were either deserted or survived their

108 MISSIONS

parents during the famines which so frequently
occurred, and these have been brought up
as Christians in schools and orphanages.

Whilst never losing sight of their main
object to preach the Gospel, the call to
share in everything which made for the
social regeneration of the people amongst
whom they worked, has ever been felt by
missionaries. But as has been shown in
the case of their religions teaching, so in
their social teaching, they are increasingly
careful to preserve all that is harmless and
all that is useful or beautiful in native customs
and habits. The tasteless imitations of
European clothes and manners are not often
due to the influence of the missionaries,
but again and again to the desires of the
people themselves.

Where there is so much to be done and,
in spite of the enormous increase in the
number of missionaries, so few to do it in
proportion to the needs of the work, there
is cause for earnest consideration and real
statesmanship to decide in what districts,
and amongst what people, or classes of
people, work should primarily be carried on.
In certain quarters, notably in parts of India

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 100

and In Korea, there is a tendency towards
mass movements in favour of Christianity.
Whole villages are ready to become Christians
at once, or, as lately in Korea, a wave of
enthusiasm accompanied by much spiritual
excitement leads many to sudden conversion.
In all cases of such mass movements, much
careful training and teaching is needed if
the people are to be anything more than
Christians in name. For this purpose a large
missionary force is requisite, till native clergy
and teachers can be trained in sufficient
numbers. To supply this need seems to
some the most important part of missionary
work a* the present moment. Others again
feel that the most imperative task is to
strengthen the appeal to the most educated
classes of the native community, and to try
to secure leaders for the future from amongst
the people themselves. They are prepared
to devote their energies to win over even
individuals amongst the high-caste Indians
and the best educated Chinese and Japanese,
and are ready to wait with patience should
they see no immediate fruit of their labours.
This must of necessity be very slow work.
But to it some of the best missionaries are

110' /MISSIONS'

content to devote their lives with little hope
of much immediate success, in the belief
that by a true setting forth of the Christian
faith, by a readiness to meet the inquiries of
students, by sympathy with national ideals,
they will best prepare the way for the future
acceptance of Christianity. Their desire is to
reach the students at the universities, and for
this purpose they open hostels where the
students can lodge, and where all their caste
scruples are carefully respected, whilst the
missionaries mix as friends with the students
and are ever ready to talk with them, to
answer their questions and to encourage
them to be seekers after the truth.

Men who are doing work of this kind do not
expect large numbers of converts. They know
too well the difficulties in the way of a student
coming forward for baptism. A Hindu boy
realises that, as a rule, from the moment of
his baptism his home will be closed to him,
none of his relations or friends will speak to
him; if they meet him they will only taunt
him with the disgrace he has brought upon
them. His property will be taken away from
him; if he is married his wife and children will
probably leave him. Yet, there are those

METHODS OF MISSION WORK 111

each year who are brave enough to come for-
ward and give up everything for what they
have learned to see is the truth. The mission-
aries are not discouraged because they are few.
They know that foundations are being laid
and that much work is being done under the
surface, and they believe that when the right
time comes, the conversion of India will take
place very rapidly. Even as it is, Chris-
tianity is spreading in India at a far quicker
ratio as regards the population than it did
in Europe at the beginning of the Christian
era. It is to the Indian Christians that
we must look for the regeneration of India.

CHAPTER VI
WOMEN'S WOBK FOB MISSIONS

THE religious orders of women within the
Roman Church have provided large numbers
of devoted women who have given themselves
to the work of starting schools and orphan-
ages in all parts of the world. They have
nursed the sick and tended the lepers; for
the most part they go to the mission field for
their whole lives and never return home again.
In the early days of Protestant missions there
was no idea of sending out women except as
the wives or perhaps sisters of missionaries.
Of these wives many proved themselves most
zealous missionaries and worked hard, starting
schools for the girls, visiting and teaching the
women, and tending the sick as far as they
were able. But very often the life of a mis-
sionary's wife was terribly hard; with home
and children to care for, frequent ill-healthj

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 113

no one to help her, surrounded by a barbar-
ous and hostile people, missionaries* wives
needed to be of heroic material, and it was
only few of them here and there who could do
much mission work themselves. Yet experi-
ence soon showed that much progress could not
be made amongst the men unless the women
were won also. The Christian converts,
unless they could be provided with Christian
wives, must almost inevitably fall back.
Moreover, the influence of the women, in spite
of their inferior and despised condition in all
non-Christian countries, was still strong, and
on account of their ignorance and natural con-
servatism it was always exerted against
Christianity. As soon, too, as European and
American women began to realise something
of the conditions under which their sisters
in other lands were living, the desire to help
and teach them was aroused. The slowness
with which any advance was made in sending
out single women as missionaries, is a measure
of the position of women and their inadequate
education during the early half of the nine-
teenth century. When women first began to
be interested in missionary work both in
England and America, the only part of the

114 MISSIONS "

work for which they were considered fit was to
collect money and to organise prayer-meet-
ings and work-parties for missions. In 1815
three English ladies offered themselves to the
Church Missionary Society, and said they
were ready to go anywhere they might be sent;
but the Society decided not to send unmarried
women abroad except as sisters joining their
brothers. A few years later, when another
lady wished to go to work in India, Bishop
Wilson of Calcutta answered: "No, the lady
will not do. I object on principle, and from
the experience of Indian life, to single ladies
coming out to so distant a place, with the
almost certainty of their marrying within a
month of their arrival/* But others more
discerning urged the imperative need of
women missionaries. An American mission-
ary, David Abeel, who had been deeply
moved by the misery and helplessness of the
Eastern women, and convinced that if Christ-
ian teaching was to prevail the home must be
reached, spoke of what he had seen to a gather-
ing of ladies in London, repeating to them the
words of some Chinese women: "Are there no
female men who can come and teach us." His
words led to the formation of the first women's

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 115

society, "The Society for Promoting Female
Education in the East/ 5 in 183-1. Its work at
the beginning met with much opposition, an
Indian missionary saying that "to attempt
female education in that country was as
hopeless as to try to scale a wall five hundred
yards high." But others emphasised the
futility of seeking for the conversion of a
people except through influencing the home,
and if this was to be done in the east it must
be done by women. After fourteen years
this first society had twenty women mission-
aries at work. By degrees other women's
societies were formed, but it was some time
before the great missionary societies really
recognised their obligation to undertake
women's work. They employed some women
in India, chiefly Eurasians, as teachers, but
they trusted to the women's societies to do
the work amongst women. Before 1887 the
number of women on the roll of the Church
Missionary Society was 103; of these fifty-five
only had been sent out as single women.
But slowly a great change took place, and,
in the years from 1887 to 1907, 691 women
were sent out. Most other societies, both
American and English, show a similar progress*

116 MISSIONS

In other cases the women's work is organised
and conducted by special women's societies.
Every advance in foreign mission work only
shows more clearly the need and import-
ance of women's work. The low position of
women is characteristic of all non-Christian
countries, and in nearly all of them polygamy
is the rule. Everywhere Christianity carries
with it in time the emancipation of women,
and with that, the progress of society as a
whole. In India and in all Moslem lands, the
seclusion of women adds to the misery of their
inferior position. From the age of ten all,
except the poorest women, are shut up in the
Zenana and not allowed to see any men ex-
cept those of their immediate family. When
Mrs* Caldwell, the wife of a missionary bishop
in South India, began (1853) to teach girls
to read, their parents exclaimed with amaze-
ment: "She will be teaching the cows next."
As a rule the women are uneducated, ignorant,
without interests or occupations. In sickness
they have no skilled help, and the ignorant
and superstitious customs of the people
add to their sufferings and risks in childbirth.
The Indian Government has put down the
custom of Suttee, that is, the burning of

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 117

the widow on her husband's funeral pyre,
but It has not been able to do anything
to diminish the sufferings of widows, of
whom there are twenty-five millions in India.
In former days widows were legally unable
to remarry, but though this restriction was
removed in 1858, the feeling against re-
marriage is so strong, that it very rarely
occurs, even when the girl became a widow in
her infancy. The widow is the drudge of the
family; her ornaments, the chief delight of
the Indian woman, are taken from her, she
is considered to bring ill-luck wherever she
goes. The hateful custom of child marriage,
by which little girls and even babies are often
married to men of fifty and older, leads to
the existence of a large number of child-
widows, whose little lives are clouded from
the first. With great difficulty a reform in
the law was carried in 1891, by which the
consummation of a marriage before the wife
was twelve years old was made illegal, but it
is difficult to ensure the keeping of this law.
Little girls, even babies, are sold or given
up by their mothers to a life of shame in
connexion with temple services, and dedicated
to evil by what is called marriage to the

118 , MISSIONS

god. All these customs which regulate the
life and decree the inferiority of women are
based on religious practices, enjoined, not by
the oldest sacred books, but by later law-
givers. Freedom from them can only be
found through a truer and purer religion
which shall give women their right place, and
by raising them, raise men with them.

In CMna the horrible custom of foot-
binding is a mark of the inferior position given
to women, and a continual source of suffering
to her; and in Japan the absolute submission
demanded from her destroys her chance of
free development. In Moslem lands, the
seclusion of women is enforced everywhere,
but with varying degrees of severity, and
except amongst the wealthy in Turkey and
Egypt, no care is given to their education*
It was against a dense mass of hostility and
prejudice that the first women missionaries
had to make their way. Only slowly were
they allowed to visit the Zenanas. Their plan
has been to begin by teaching embroidery or
sewing of different kinds, and to add to it, as
it became possible, the teaching of reading and
of the Bible. In the dullness of Zenana life
any change was welcome, and, entrance once

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 119

obtained, the missionary lady or the native
biblewoman whom she trained as her helper,
became a friend whose visits were eagerly
anticipated. But there can be little hope
of making converts in this way, since for the
secluded Indian woman to come forward for
baptism is well-nigh impossible. Still pre-
judices are removed, the soil is prepared, and
through the visits to the Zenanas permission
is won for the children to go to school.
Schools of every kind, from little village
schools in a hut to well-equipt high schools,
have been started by the women missionaries.
The higher education is for the most part for
the children of native Christians who are being
trained, some to be teachers, nurses, or doctors,
but the greater number to be Christian wives
and mothers, and so to build up Christian
homes. Of late years some schools have been
started for high-caste Indian girls, in which
strict purdah is observed.

It early appeared what great need there
was for medical work amongst Eastern
women, and almost as soon as a medical edu-
cation was open to women in England and
America women doctors began to train for
mission work. There are now fine hospitals

120 MISSIONS

for women in all parts of the mission field,
which in themselves are a visible proof of the
position given to women by Christianity.
Amongst their own people for long ages
their health and even their life had been
treated as of no account. The strength
of the influence exercised by the women
missionaries is shown by the remark of a
Hindu who said to a missionary at Amritzar:
"We do not greatly fear your schools, we
need not send our children. We do not
much fear your preaching, we need not listen,
but we fear your women and we dread your
doctors, for your doctors are winning our
hearts, and your women are winning our
homes, and when our hearts and our homes
are won what is there left of us?"

If the suffering and ignorance and neglected
condition of women in the East was a power-
ful inducement at first for Western women to
go to their help, the present condition caused
by the new movements in the East calls even
more imperatively for help and guidance
from the experience of the West. Amongst
the enormous populations of India and China,
progress in a sense must be slow, and the
vast majority of the women are illiterate;

WOMEN'S WORK MISSIONS 121

yet at the top there Is a striking movement
towards emancipations towards a fuller life.
Educated Indian men are beginning to desire
educated wives. More knowledge of the con-
ditions outside are making some at least of the
women impatient and restless in their seclu-
sion. "/\Some, chiefly Christian women, have
shown by their achievements what great capa-
cities they possess as teachers, doctors, and
evangelists. Others have displayed their
powers of leadership and organisation, their
eagerness for progress, their desire for educa-
tion. In China, even in Persia, girls' schools
are springing up everywhere. Amongst the
vast populations of India and China, the pro-
portion of women who are touched by this
modem movement is, of course, small, but
these are the women who will make them-
selves felt. Even in those parts of India
where women's education is most backward,
the latest government report tells us that the
number of girls attending school has almost
doubled in the last five years. At present,
at most seven women in a thousand in India
and barely one in a thousand In China can
read.

But the rapidity with which things are

MISSIONS

moving has no parallel In the history of the
past. We hear of women speaking in public in
China and India, of women newspaper editors
and writers. This awakening of the women
of the East is largely due to the work of the
missionaries in the past, and the missionaries
of the present day are feeling that no call is so
urgent as that to help to guide the develop-
ment and emancipation of these women by a
right education, towards true and noble ideals.
The old religious sanctions which guarded
the life of the family are being thrown aside,
and disaster must follow to the moral and
social life of the nations if nothing takes
their place. Neither must the education of
the women of India repeat the mistakes made
in the education of the men by being too
Western in character. This is largely out of
the hands of the missionary educationalists,
as they have to conform to the government
curricula in order to earn the government
grant, but their important share in educational
work should enable them to exercise influence
in the right direction, if only they can get
women with the knowledge, the sympathy,
the breadth of mind needed to devote them-
selves to the question.

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 128

It Is not only amongst the old civilisations
of the East that the work of women mission-
aries is important. The same need is felt
amongst the peoples of Africa. Here there is
no impossibility in men teaching the women,
but it is naturally not easy for them to reach
them. The earlier missionaries in Uganda
found that the women throughout the country
were the most earnest followers of the heathen
religion, upholding everywhere the power of
demon- worship. The extraordinary response
to Christian teaching amongst the people of
Uganda made the great missionary. Bishop
Tucker, increasingly anxious to have English
women to teach the native women. He said:
"For the sake of the women and children
in other words, for the sake of the future
of Uganda it was absolutely essential that
the ministry of English women should, with
the least possible delay, take its part in the
work." This was only in 1895. Amongst
the authorities of the Church Missionary
Society at home there was much hesitation,
owing to the risks attendant on the 800 miles 5
march from the coast before the days of the
railway. But at last it was agreed that five
ladies should be sent, with five more men mis-

124 MISSIONS

slonarles, and Bishop Tucker made the most
careful arrangements for their long march, on
which he himself accompanied them. The
difficulties of the journey can be seen from the
fact that for this party, besides an army of 500
porters, 100 extra men were needed to carry
tins of water across the desert that had first to
be crossed. The march to the capital of
Uganda took eleven weeks. Bishop Tucker
thus describes their arrival: "The welcome
accorded to the ladies by the Baganda
women at Ngogwe was well-nigh overwhelm-
ing. They ran along by the side of the ladies'
chairs, grasping their hands and uttering all
manner of joyful and loving greetings. As
we drew near to the mission station the crowd
increased, so that it was difficult to get along.
When the ladies alighted to climb the hill
they were embraced by the Baganda women
in all the fullness of their hearts' joy." Six
hundred people were gathered in the church
for a hastily arranged service of thanksgiving.
The king wrote to express his joy, saying:
"Even from my childhood I have never seen
English ladies. 5 ' Other natives sent warm
words of welcome, one of them writing: "You
have done a wonderful thing for us in bringing

WOMEN'S WORK FOR MISSIONS 125

up ladies/' and ended his letter with an
urgent invitation to Ms house. " It is a short
way off. I beg of you not to make me un-
happy. Consent to my request with the maid-
servants of Jehovah." When the party
reached Mengo, the capital, the welcome was
still more amazing. The mass of people made
it almost impossible to get along. The Bishop
writes that "the crowds which gathered to see
Sir Gerald Portal enter Mengo, were nothing
to the crowds which welcomed the first English
ladies to the capital of Uganda. Six thousand
people gathered inside and outside the
Cathedral on the following Sunday for a
service of thanksgiving."

This little band of ladies at once set to
work to tend the sick, and to teach the
women and girls. Others came out from
England to help them, and thirteen years
after there were fifty women, married and
single, working in the mission, and 14,300
native girls in the schools. Native women
have been trained to share in the work of
the conversion of their heathen neighbours,
for the Church of Uganda has from the first
been a missionary church, and the best work
among the heathen women is done by native

126 MISSIONS

women teachers. Women are encouraged
to take an interest In the affairs of the Church;
they have their own church councils, advisory
bodies on which the most earnest of the
women sit. They are eager for education,
and will walk six or eight miles a day to get to
a school. The ladies have started a special
school for the daughters of chiefs, where great
care is taken not to Europeanise them. The
English ladies consider that their chief work is
to train the women to be Christian wives and
mothers, so that there may be true home life
among the Baganda, and to raise by educa-
tion the whole status of the women, who be-
fore the coming of Christianity were regarded
as mere chattels.

Work of the same kind is needed amongst
the women who accompany the natives who
crowd to labour in the mines on the Rand,
and in every part of the world it is now
recognised that without the assistance of
women mission work must be incomplete.
Neither have women martyrs been wanting.
Many perished in China after horrible suffer-
ings during the Boxer riots. One American
lady, Dr. Chesnut, who escaped at that time,
returned the following year to China. There

WOMEN'S WOEK FOE MISSIONS 1

In a sudden riot the mob attacked the mission
and murdered the missionaries. They brought
Dr. Chesnut to the temple steps, and as she
sat waiting for death, she noticed a little boy
in the crowd with an ugly gash in his head.
She called him to her, and tearing off a piece
of her skirt, made a bandage and bound up
the wound. Then the mob struck her, threw
her into the river, and stabbed her to death
as she lay there.

CHAPTER VII

THE MOSLEM PBOBIaEM

THE greatest opposition to the spread of
the Christian faith throughout the world
comes from the Moslem power. More than
one-fifth of the whole non-Christian world
follows the religion of Mohammed, yet mission
work amongst Moslems has never received
anything like the same attention in proportion
as mission work amongst the heathen peoples*
This is in the main on account of its very
special difficulty. The Moslem faith is the
strongest force that is arrayed against Chris-
tianity; it is the only great religion that has
sprung up since the rise of Christianity, and
for this very reason, its adherents consider
it, since it is a later revelation, as a superior
faith bound to supplant its rival. This
makes the Mohammedan very difficult of
appi'oach; he is filled with intense pride and

120

self-satisfaction 5 and even the poorest and
most degraded follower of Mohammed looks
upon the Christian with profound contempt.
At the present day, two-thirds of the whole
Mohammedan population of the world are
under Christian rule. This has removed one
great difficulty which formerly stood in the
way of the conversion of the Mohammedan,
since amongst these peoples at any rate
conversion is no longer forbidden under
penalty of death. Even in the countries
still under Mohammedan rule, contact with
civilisation, and in Turkey the beginnings
of greater toleration, make it easier for
Christian influence to make itself felt. Yet
whether under Christian or Mohammedan
rule, the vast number of Mohammedans, two
hundred and thirty million souls, in spite
of their divisions into different sects all
turn to Mecca as the centre of their faith; all
are united by a belief in one God and in
Mohammed as his prophet. One social sys-
tem binds them together, and they stand, a
mighty force, united against the rest of the
world, capable of a religious enthusiasm
which may arouse them to the wildest out-
bursts of fanaticism.

130 MISSIONS

Islam at the present day is the only other
great aggressive religion in the world besides
Christianity. In India, as far as can be
ascertained, it has been stationary during the
last two hundred years, whilst Christianity
has of late gained ground with increasing
rapidity. It is in Africa, both in the past
and continuously up to the present day, that
the advance of Islam has been most marked,
and here lies the greatest danger for the
future. There are many even amongst
Christians who are prepared to maintain
that for the African natives Islam is the
most suitable religion. It is perhaps one
of the great reasons of its advance, that it is
so admirably suited to the nature and capacity
of the average man. It is comparatively
easy to achieve its ideals, whilst the Christian
ideals, with their high standard of morals,
are far removed from possible attainment by
the average man. Hence it is argued by some
that the best we can hope for the African
native is that he should become Moham-
medan, and that missions to Mohammedans
are mistaken and a waste of energy.

This is not the place to argue the respective
merits of Islam and Christianity, but some

THE MOSLEM PROBLEM 131

things may be pointed out which are sufficient
to make every earnest Christian zealous for
tills enterprise, however difficult it may be.
The way in which women are regarded in the
teaching of Mohammed condemns them, and
with them the whole social life of Mohamme-
dans to perpetual degradation; there is no
possibility for them to remove the restrictions
and disabilities under which they labour, for
they are enjoined by Mohammed himself
in the Koran. Slavery is also part of the
social system of Islam, authorised by the
prophet himself, and in Mohammedan lands,
wherever Christian governments are not able
to interfere, the slave trade is carried on with
the most ruthless disregard of human suffer-
ing and life.. Moreover the Mohammedan
religion, bound as it is to a book, shows no
possibility for growth or development. Its
unbending conservatism makes any reform
impossible, and the countries where it has
prevailed have never been progressive. In-
deed the degraded condition of the Moham-
medan women must make progress impossible.
Introduced amongst an ignorant and barbar-
ous people, Mohammedanism does much to
develop in them more orderly habits of life,

188 , MISSIONS

as is often seen in Africa, but It stops there
and leads to no further progress and develop-
ment. The advance of Islam In Africa is
seen therefore to be not only a hindrance
to the progress of Christianity,, but to be
also a bar to the real progress of civilisation.
It would seem almost as if the very difficulty
of producing any impression upon the vast
strength of Mohammedanism had in the past
paralysed Christian energies, or rather turned
them into other channels. At present, whilst
the call to evangelise the heathen is felt
more strongly than ever, the fact is being
at last clearly faced that the missionary
problem of the day is how to use the special
opportunities of the moment. At last the
door is open, conversion to Christianity is
no longer forbidden under penalty of death
in the greater part of the Mohammedan
world; this is the time for a determined
attempt to overcome the power of Islam-
There can be no doubt that this is a formid-
able task, perhaps the most formidable task
that has ever confronted the Christian Church.
But it is necessary not for the sake of the
Mohammedans alone, but for those peoples
who will be converted to Islam unless Islam

133

can first be won. For such a task different
methods are needed than for oilier missionary
work, and those methods need to be dis-
covered and studied. Here and there in the
past great individuals have realized some-
tiling of the nature of this problem., and have
tried to prepare themselves for the task.
After the fruitless attempt of the crusades
to destroy the power of Islam by the sword
St. Francis of Assisi and Raymond Lull
tried the more peaceable method of argument
to convince the learned mullahs, the Moslem
teachers, and Lull gave his life to studying
their faith and arguing against it both in
speaking and writing. After his death it was
long before any one else took up his work.
The great Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier,
followed his methods with the learned mullahs
in India, and with the beginning of modern
missions, the work was taken up again.
Henry Martyn (1781-1812), a Cambridge
Senior Wrangler, devoted his brilliant gifts
to the missionary cause. He studied Sanscrit,
Persian, and Arabic to prepare himself for
his work, and when he reached India his
linguistic facility enabled him quickly to learn
Hindustani. He died at the age of thirty-

134 MISSIONS

one, after only five years' work In the East,
but Ms burning zeal produced an immense
impression on all who knew Mm, and made
his example powerfully effective after his
death, when his letters and diaries were
published. He translated the New Testament
into Hindustani and Persian, and intended
to translate it also into Arabic. For this
purpose he travelled from India to Persia,
and engaged in many discussions with
Mohammedans. He hoped himself to offer
his translation of the New Testament to
the Shah, but he died of fever in Arabia, and
it was the English Ambassador who first
presented Ms Persian New Testament to
the Shah and then had it printed and circu-
lated in Persia.

The work begun by Martyn was carried
on by a German missionary in Persia Dr.
Pfander. He wrote (1829) a learned work
which refuted the false teaching of the
Koran, and contained a full statement of
Christian doctrine. This book was the means
of many conversions from Mohammedanism .
Forced to leave Persia, Pf ander went to India,
and at Agra met with Valpy French, an
Oxford man, and an ardent missionary.

, THE MOSLEM PROBLEM 135

Together they were successful in gaining
many converts from Mohammedanism. The
Moslems grew alarmed, and began to write
answers to Pfander's book. Some of their
learned Moulvies made a study of Christian
books and of western critical writings, and
challenged Pfander and French to a public
discussion. This discussion took place in a
room crowded with Mohammedans sitting
cross-legged on the floor. The Moulvies
were surrounded by their students, and had
piles of German and French books by their
side. For two days the discussion went on,
and at the end each side claimed to be
victorious. But not many years after two
of the Moulvies, who had then for the first
time heard the arguments in favour of Chris-
tianity, came forward for baptism, and one
in the service of the State, and the other in
the service of the Church, spent their lives
as consistent Christians. French ever felfc
himself a disciple of Pfander in the work
amongst the Mohammedans to which he
gave his life. He became Bishop of Lahore,
but loved to escape from episcopal business
to the work of direct evangelisation. He
knew how to get near the heart of the Indian.

136 MISSIONS

Dining once with an old Pundit, a convert,
lie noticed that he did not know how to use
his knife, and to make him feel at his ease, he
himself ate with his fingers. He Invited a
converted Moslem to spend a week with him
alone in a police bungalow, that they might
preach to the natives and spend the evenings
in Christian converse together. The convert
said afterwards: "I have always believed
Bishop French to be a special friend of God
on the earth." Later, French resigned his
bishopric, but he could not settle down in
retirement in England. At the age of sixty-
five he went alone to Muscat, in Arabia, to
start pioneer mission work, and alone there
' the old Christian warrior died.

Conversions from the Moslem faith in
India have always been individual there has
never been anything of the nature of a mass
movement. Amongst the converts have been
men of real intellectual mark. A considerable
number of the native clergy working under
the Church Missionary Society in the Punjab
are converts from Islam. Dr. Imad-ud-din
a distinguished convert himself, wrote a
paper for the religious conference at Chicago
in which he said that converts from Islam

MOSLEM 137

to Christianity have come and are coining in

their thousands. In Ms paper, he gives a list of
over a hundred converts from Islam to Christi-
anity now occupying influential positions both
in Church and State in India. He points out
that the number of learned converts from
Islam is far greater than that of unlearned.

It is everywhere one of the chief objects
of the missionaries to get into touch with
Moslem students and to try through them
to influence Moslem thought. This is being
done in India and also in Egypt. The number
of students that come from all parts of the
world to the great Mohammedan university,
El Azhar, make Cairo the intellectual centre of
the Mohammedan world. There, in the great
court of the university and under its many-
pillared portico, the students sit in groups
round the feet of their teachers, and now, in
consequence of the peace and religious tolera-
tion that prevails in Egypt, Christians can
even enter this great court and find oppor-
tunity to talk and discuss with the Moslem
students.

Since Cairo is the centre of the Mohamme-
dan intellectual world, it has beea wisely
thought that it should be also the centre for

138 . MISSIONS

the Christian study of the Moslem problem.

Here men of trained Intellectual power can
easily get into touch with Moslem students,
Moslem thought and literature can be studied,
and the Arabic language can be really
mastered. At the mission, open house is
kept for those who wish to come in and talk
with the teachers. One such describes how
lie came in one evening with twenty students
from El Azhar on purpose to break up the
meeting,, and interrupted the speaker, calling
out "to all true believers to rise up and
protest." But what struck him as strange
was that whilst he treated the missionaries
with hatred and insult, they never ceased to
treat him "with courtesy and even love."
He adds: "So I saw that whereas Islam
teaches us to return hate with hate, Chris-
tianity, on the contrary, teaches men to love
their enemies and to treat them courteously/ 5
This man afterwards became a Christian,
giving up all his worldly prospects for this
purpose, and only freeing himself from the
authority of his father by signing a statement
in the presence of Lord Cromer.

The mission at Cairo issues a journal and
prepares literature of various kinds for the

THE MOSLEM 189

purpose of putting before Mohammedans the
true nature of the Christian faith. Written
in Arabic, a language with which many
educated Moslems aU over the world are
acquainted, this literature finds its way to
many parts of the Moslem world. The same
work of publication is carried on in Madras
for the Indian Moslems. By work such as
this, by study of Moslem thought at the
head-quarters of Moslem learning, by inter-
course with Moslem students and teachers,
the peculiar characteristics of Islam will be
understood and the secret of its strength dis-
covered, whilst Christian missionaries will be
trained up and fitted for this the most diffi-
cult and the most urgent of all the missionary
tasks that lie before the Christian Church.
Throughout the Turkish Empire the ab-
sence, until quite lately, of religious liberty has
made anything like direct missionary work im-
possible. Educational and medical work have
been preparing the way, and have done much
to influence the thought of the people.
Especially amongst the Turkish women do
there appear to be many symptoms of a
desire for a change from the secluded and
inferior positions which, now that many of

140 MISSIONS

them are receiving a really good education,
appears to them Intolerable. "\Yhen, In 19C8,
the Constitution was proclaimed In Turkey.,
thousands of women threw off their veils
and rushed Into the streets to join in the cry
of liberty. For them, liberty was not so easily
won. They had to go back to their seclusion.
But there are many among them who are no
longer content to submit willingly to the
restrictions Imposed upon them, and in Persia
too many women are coming to feel the
desire for a fuller and freer life. To help them
in their efforts must be the earnest desire of
all Christians, and the future of Turkey and of
Persia will largely depend upon their success.
The Moslem problem, difficult everywhere-,
is probably most urgent in the great continent
of Africa. There the Mohammedan religion
is spreading amongst the pagan tribes*
Every Mohammedan trader is a mission-
ary, and, as he penetrates into the heart
of Africa, he spreads his faith wherever
he goes. The native is impressed by Ms
superior cleverness; he readily feels that it
will be an improvement to his position to
become a Mohammedan. To do so he has
only to profess Ms adherence to the brief

MOSLEM PROBLEM 141

Mohammedan creed, and lie Is at once one

of the great fellowship of this mighty religion*
free to give his daughters in marriage to the
Moslem, and to share in all the prestige of
the man whom he admires. It is only a very
thin veneer of Mohammedanism that is spread
over the pagan tribes of central Africa, but
it is enough to add to the many difficulties of
the Christian missions in that vast country.

Africa has been divided up into spheres of
influence under the great European powers;
wherever commerce and trade are penetrating
Islam can easily follow on account of the
peace made by Christian Europe, whilst the
suppression of the slave trade forces the trader
to turn his energies into other directions.
European steamers convey countless pilgrims
to Mecca, and if the political power of
Islam appears to be decreasing, its religious
power seems to be increasing. This is a
direct challenge to Christendom. It needs
to be met by the concerted effort of all who
care for the spread of the Christian faith.
The native Churches in Africa must be built
up and strengthened, and at the same time
the centres of Moslem teaching at Cairo,
Constantinople, Agra, and Delhi must be

142 MISSIONS

attacked by men and women able to meet
the learned Moslem in argument, because
they have studied his ideas and tried to
understand Ms methods of thought and the
real foundation and meaning of his religious
system. In the past it has perhaps been
too much the tendency for missions to devote
their chief energies to the conversion of the
heathen because of the difficulty of work
amongst the Moslems, but it is being in-
creasingly felt that at the present moment
it is the problem how to win the Moslems
that most urgently calls for the attention
of missionaries. A German authority on
the subject says, that "the chief hindrance,
which even at the present day stands in the
way of a comprehensive, united, enthusiastic
missionary advance of the Church into Mo-
hammedan territory, is want of courage."
But the way is more open than it has ever
been. Conversion is no longer punishable
by death in the Turkish Empire; the exten-
sion of commerce, the spread of education,
the improved methods of communication
have broken down the old isolation of the
Mohammedans and brought them in many
new waysunder Christian influences, or rather,

THE MOSLEM PROBLEM 143

perhaps, under the influence of Christian
civilisation. There is a growing feeling that
all Christian missions must combine to dis-
cover the way in which they can best use the
present opportunities, and meet the formida-
ble difficulties in the way of really forward
work amongst the Mohammedans. It is the
most difficult missionary problem, but in view
of the low level of intellect and character to
which "poor ethical ideals, the degradation
of womanhood and a fatalistic philosophy
have steadily brought Moslem society/' it
is one which makes an ever increasingly
urgent appeal to Christendom.

CHAPTER VIII

MISSION WORK AMONGST COLONISTS

THE Society for the Propagation of the
Gospel was founded with the special object
of providing for the religious needs of those
who settled as colonists in new countries.
The duty of the Established Church of Eng-
land to care for her children wherever they
went was recognised both by the Church and
the Government, In India and the West
Indies chaplains were appointed with bishops
here and there to supervise them. In
America it was not thought necessary at first
to appoint bishops, and the clergy there were
under the supervision of the Bishop of London.
It was not till the year 1784, after the War of
Independence, that the first American bishop,
Dr. Seabury, was consecrated. Three years
later the first colonial bishop, Dr. Inglis,
Bishop of Nova Scotia, was appointed.

144

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 145

Amongst the colonists, especially in New
England, were many deeply religious people,
who had come as voluntary exiles from their
native land to seek a new home where they
might be free to worship God as they pleased.
These naturally had their own ministers and
teachers. The French in Canada were well
cared for by their priests. But when the
great expanses of the far West, first in the
United States and later in Canada, began to
receive settlers, the difficulty of providing
them with any possibility of religious worship
and teaching was very great. The first
settlers were, of course, widely scattered;
means of communication were dangerous
and rare, and not only had the settlers to
be kept true to their faith, but there were
the Indians to be converted. Amongst the
pioneers in this missionary work were many
heroes, men who shunned no labour to reach
the settlers, sleeping in rude cabins and
miserable taverns or on the hard earth itself,
knowing by their geniality and ready wit
how to make themselves welcome in any
company, whether in miners' camps or in the
company of rough sheep-herders and cowboys.
Amongst these pioneers many were bishops

146 MISSIONS

of the American Church, who feared neither
toll nor hardship, and helped by their work
for religion and for education to build up the
great civilisation of the western states of
America.

In Canada the problem was even more
difficult owing to the greater severity of the
climate. The western territories, to which
the name Rupertsland was given, were first
explored by the Hudson Bay Company,
founded in order to collect from the Indians
the valuable furs which abounded in the
country. In 1815 there existed no building
intended to be used as a place of religious
worship through the whole extent of the
Company's territories. The first ministers
of religion to settle in Eupertsland were two
Roman Catholic priests, and two years later
there came an Anglican chaplain for the
Hudson Bay Company. There was no Pres-
byterian minister till 1851. There were
some missions amongst the Indians, but the
scattered settlers were quite uncared for.
In 1849 the first Bishop of Rupertsland was
appointed. His chief work, and that of his
successor, the famous Bishop Machray, lay
amongst the settlements along the Red River.

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 147

A little mission church called St. John's, near
Fort Garry on the river, was his cathedral.
Now enlarged and transformed it stands in
the centre of the great city of Winnipeg,
From here Machray made tours through his
diocese, travelling in a dog sleigh and spend-
ing night after night sleeping by a camp fire.
To get men to help him in his work was his
first desire. "We must struggle for the living
agent/* he said, and with this object he
started a training college for clergy which is
now part of the University of Manitoba.

The difficulty of mission work amongst the
colonists was and still is increased even more
than in the case of work amongst non-Christ-
ians by religious differences. The Presbyter-
ians and Wesleyans, always strong in eastern
Canada, naturally wished to minister to their
own people. Their plan in the newly settled
districts, where there was not support for a
regular minister, was to send a student from a
college who was studying for the ministry to
hold services during the summer months and
prepare the way for apermanent minister. A
new settlement was naturally not likely to be
able to support more than one church, and so
the religious body that was first in the field

148 MISSIONS

was likely to be the one to remain. On
the other hand, in cases where there were
settlers strongly attached to their own de-
nomination, attempts would be made to
support two or even three separate churches
in a place unable to do more than properly
support one. Besides the Protestant bodies
there was also the Roman Church anxious
to minister to the Irish and to the French
and half-breeds from eastern Canada who
joined the migration to the west. So the
whole work could not be wisely planned in
such a way as to cover, if possible, all the
needs of a population thinly scattered over
such a wide area. The Anglican Church
received much help from England, but its
policy in mission work in the colonies has
always been to make it self-supporting as soon
as possible, and, whilst freely sending men to
newly settled districts, only to give money
to build churches in proportion to what may
be raised by the settlers themselves.

It was after 1881 that the great develop-
ment of the far West began. In that year the
contract for the Canadian Pacific Railway
was signed. Bishop Machray had foreseen
the great inrush of emigrants, and had done

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 149

much to make the Church ready to receive It;
the Presbyterian Church had done the same,
Where Bishop Machray had been in sole
charge when he first came out, there were now
six other bishops working. An American
visitor to Winnipeg in 1887 speaks with
admiring praise of the number of the churches,
and says: "On Sunday there are no street
cars running, nor is there any other desecra-
tion of the Lord's Day. The entire population
seem to go to church. It is a wonderful
contrast to the open ungodliness and un-
blushing wickedness of any western (Ameri-
can) town of its size and age, and causes us to
hang our heads with shame at the contrast.
It is a wonderful tribute to the blessed in-
fluence of the Church, which was here all
ready to receive the tide of population when it
came pouring in, and which moulded it
as it came."

Each year as the great railways were built
and the boundless prairie was brought under
cultivation increased the difficulty of mission
work amongst the settlers. It is repeatedly
said by those who have watched the present
development of western Canada that nothing
like it has ever been experienced elsewhere.

150 MISSIONS

The railways, combined with the rich re-
sources of the country, have made this un-
exampled growth possible. In Columbia, on
the other side of the Eocky Mountains, with
its matchless scenery, its beautiful climate and
its boundless natural resources the same de-
velopment has gone on. It may be only a
few years till the settlers are well enough off to
pay for their own churches and clergy, but if
they have been left alone till then to build up
their homes in a struggle of ten cruel and bitter,
many will certainly fall away from all religion,
and their children will grow up as many are
doing now in practical heathendom. Besides
this the settlers are men of many kinds and
nationalities from many different parts of
Europe, and from the west of America, people
who often profess to belong to no religious
body. Anglicans, Wesleyans, Presbyterians,
Roman Catholics must all desire to follow their
own people, and at the same time to help in
the building up out of all these varied elements
and different nationalities a nation which shall
not only be rich and prosperous but truly
Christian. Mission work has to be carried
on in mining centres and lumber camps,
among the navvies working on the railway

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS Wl

as well as among the scattered homesteads
on the prairie. To reach their people the
missionaries must make long trips in canoes or
in sleighs in the intense cold of the long winter,
often camping out at night or accepting part
of a bed in a farmer's shack or a bunk in a
miners* camp. In the earlier days these long
journeys were constantly attended with real
hardship and danger, and the record of them is
like a thrilling tale of adventure. There is
plenty of hardship and danger still, and what
is often worse to bear, long months and even
years of isolation to be faced, especially
for those working in the far north. Novel
methods of work have to be tried. Young
laymen are much used under a scheme started
by Archdeacon Lloyd in Saskatchewan*
Each has a light cart which carries a tent
and his absolute necessaries, and he spends
the summer driving through the prairie visit-
ing the scattered homesteads, gathering the
people for services on Sunday in a barn or
pool-room, and whenever possible getting
them to put up a small t wooden church at
some convenient centre. During the worst
months of the winter these young men are
brought together at a college to study and

152 MISSIONS

to be prepared, when suitable, for future
ordination.

The needs of the men dwelling in isolated
logger camps on the islands round about
Vancouver, have had to be met by exceptional
means. A mission steamer has been started
to provide them with both spiritual and
medical help. Its cabin is fitted up so that
reverent services can be held in it; there
is also a lending library of books, and there
are two hospital cots. Here patients are
taken in, generally men suffering from acci-
dents or sometimes from fights in the camps;
the steamer then carries them to one of the
small hospitals which have been put up on
the coast. The ship is thus a floating hospital,
library, and church combined. Similar work
is being done on the inhospitable coast of
Labrador, where long ago brave Moravian
missionaries settled to teach the Eskimos.
Now a devoted English missionary, Dr.
Grenfell, has brought new hope and joy into
the lives of these lonely people. He has
caused little hospitals to be built at intervals
along the coast, and he has a hospital boat
in which he visits the different fishing stations,
and in which, if necessary, patients can be

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 153

transported to one of the hospitals for further
treatment. In his care for the well-being of
the people, he has also, by introducing the
reindeer among them, added considerably
to their material resources.

The emigration to Canada has in many
ways added to the difficulty of mission work
among the Indians, who both in Canada and
in America suffer from their contact with
civilisation. Probably the majority of
them are now nominal Christians, and they
are ministered to by clergy of their own
race. The present mission work is chiefly
educational; the children come from the
reserves where the Indians live, to the mis-
sion centre, and spend some years there at
school, going back afterwards to their own
families.

Mission work amongst the colonists in the
West Indies and in the southern states of
America was from the first complicated by
the existence of the large population of negro
slaves. In early days in South Carolina, the
masters were as a rule opposed to the en-
deavours of the missionaries to teach the
slaves, whilst the slaves showed themselves
most eager for instruction. This early atti-

154 . MISSIONS

tnde towards the slaves has, no doubt, helped
to increase the difficulty of the problems
occasioned by the existence of the negro
population since the emancipation of the
slaves. In the British West Indian colonies
the emancipation came much sooner, and for
that and other reasons, the racial difficulties
are by no means so acute. In Jamaica the
various races join together in church worship
and communion, and many of the coloured
and black people take part in the manage-
ment of Church affairs and in the ministra-
tions of the Church. It is interesting to note
this fact, so different from anything that
prevails either in the United States or in
South Africa.

In Australia and New Zealand needs similar
to those in Canada and America had to be met.
The work was made more difficult owing to
the fact that the early colonists in Australia
were for the most part convicts. The first
batch of some 750 men and women convicts
were sent out by Government in 1787, with no
religious minister of any kind. It was only
at the last moment that, owing to the repre-
sentations of Wilberforce, a chaplain was
appointed, who worked singlehanded amongst

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 155

them for seven years. The first work done
by any missionary society was to send teachers
for the children of the convicts. It was
difficult to do much under such unpromising
conditions. Little help was given by tlie
Government, who contented themselves with
putting Australia under the jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Calcutta. Only in 1836 did
Australia get a bishop of its own. Slowly,
and chiefly through the help of the S.P.G.,
something was done to provide travelling
missionaries for the scattered settlers, and
to try to lift them out of the infidelity and
drunkenness in which most of them were liv-
ing. In 1850 the Bishop of Sydney stated:
"Wherever I go it is but to witness a scanty
population, scattered over tracts of country,
hundreds of miles in extent, without churches,
clergy, or instructors of any kind, and without
any means of Christian education for their
children." When the discovery of gold sent
a rush of new settlers to the country, more
missionaries were sent by the S.P.G. to
minister to the gold-diggers, and slowly, as the
wealth of the new towns increased, the Church
in Australia grew self-supporting. Help was
still needed for the outlying districts, and has

156 MISSIONS

continued to this day to be needed in that
vast and thinly populated country. To meet
the needs of the people of late years several
bush brotherhoods have been started, com-
munities of clergy who live at a common
centre, and go out for periodical visitations
to the bush dwellers and timber getters
scattered over an immense district the only
way of ministering to a country where there
may be 100,000 people scattered over an area
of 130,000 square miles. The bush brothers
learn, as one of them has said, "to sleep on
the bare floor, on Mother Earth, on a sofa a
foot too short, in a single bed with another
man who snores and kicks." But these
drawbacks are as "nothing compared with
the joy of working amongst the farmers,"
whom they describe as "battling along in
that lonely land in the face of hardships and
difficulties innumerable." They are able to
cheer and help these lonely settlers, to baptise
the children, to encourage the women.
Services are held wherever possible, "some-
times in the police barracks, sometimes in
the parlour of a public-house, sometimes in a
dancing-hall. Everywhere there is the same
sense of reality, the same earnest attention,

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 157

the same hearty if not particularly musical
singing of the hymns."

In New Zealand, there were many of the
same problems as in Australia, but there was
not there the added difficulty of having
convicts as the first settlers. Early in the
nineteenth century, missionaries went to
work amongst the Maoris, the fine race who
were the original inhabitants of New Zealand,
and some help was given to the settlers to
build schools for their own and for the native
children. In 1841, the English Government
sent out a Bishop with full powers to organise
the Church in New Zealand. George Selwyn,
the first Bishop in New Zealand, was a man of
rare gifts, who would have been certain of a
distinguished career at home. He went out
full of hope and energy to what his friends
felt to be a great and holy adventure. The
people in New Zealand did not know what to
look for in a missionary bishop, and the
Governor said with some scorn when he heard
of his coming: "What can a bishop do in
New Zealand, where there are no roads for
his coach/' They soon learnt something of
the nature of the man they had got. The
Bishop spent over six months on his first

158 MISSIONS

visitation journey through Ms new diocese,
going, not in a coach, but as a tramp more than
1,000 miles on foot. He got back with
blistered feet, his last pair of thick shoes
worn out, but he had kept his suit sufficiently
decent to enable him to enter Auckland by
daylight. It was not only devotion to his
work that he showed, but the capacity of a
statesman in his wise plans for the organisa-
tion of the Church, which he desired to make
self-supporting and independent of the Church
at home. He was interested too In everything
that made for the well-being of the colony, in
the teaching of industries, and especially of
wool-weaving, and tried to correct in every
way the slovenliness which he considered to
be the bane of aU colonial work. He rebuked
the settlers for their land-grabbing and for
their treatment of the natives, and it is said
that at his approach they used to grumble:
"Here comes the Bishop to prevent us fighting
with the natives."

After seven years' work in New Zealand,
Bishop Selwyn set himself to do what he
could to carry out the Archbishop of Canter-
bury's parting injunction, and try to carry
the Gospel to the Pacific Islands. In some of

jWORK AMONGST COLONISTS 159

the islands he found Wesleyan Missions estab-
lished, and he made no attempt to interfere
with their work. But in other islands, where
there were no missions already he started work
on his own lines. He went about amongst them
in a little yacht of twenty tons, carrying no
arms, an enterprise which was attended with
no little risk. His plan was to land on an
island and make friends with the islanders,
and then try to persuade them to let him
carry off some of the most likely youths to
be educated, in the hope that they would in
time become missionaries to their own people.
The boys spent the summer in New Zealand
at school, and returned to their own homes in
the winter. By these means, which have been
continued since his day, native missionaries
in large numbers have been trained, and they
are working at present in the islands of the
Pacific and even in New Guinea.

Amongst the Maoris also he built up a
native Church, and by his influence he helped
to make the Church both in Australia and
New Zealand from the first a missionary
Church. To establish the Church in his
diocese on a firm basis was his great object,
and for this he spared no pains. He con-

160 MISSIONS

tinned to travel about every part of the
country, either walking or riding, visiting and
teaching the people and confirming the
children. He would plunge alone into the
bush for one of these long tours, and it is told
of him that on one occasion he promised his
archdeacon six months before to meet him at
the end of one of his tours at a particular spot.
The archdeacon went to the meeting-place
and as his watch pointed to the hour, he
saw the bishop emerge from a thicket looking
"well, wiry and bushy/'

The influence of Bishop Selwyn on mis-
sionary enterprise all over the world and
at home in England was very great. He left
a strong Church with its own independent
constitution and four bishops working in
New Zealand, and Bishop Patteson in charge
of the work in the islands. It was there that,
landing on a strange island where the conduct
of some traders had irritated the natives
against the white men, Bishop Patteson was
treacherously murdered. He is venerated as
one of our missionary heroes for his blame-
less life and the noble and courageous work he
was doing in the islands at the time of his
death.

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 161

South Africa also called for mission work
amongst the colonists. Here the problem
was complicated by the presence of the Boers,
and by the large native population, and also
by the frequent wars that have distracted the
country. Mission work amongst the native
population in a colony has always been
peculiarly difficult owing to the attitude of
the colonists to the natives. They have, in
almost all cases, shown themselves ruthless
in the way in which they took possession of
the lands of the natives, and their one interest
in the natives themselves has been to turn
them into beasts of burden and instruments
of labour. In Australia the aboriginal tribes
almost disappeared before there was any one
to care for their interests. Now an attempt
is being made by missionaries to teach and
protect those that remain. In New Zealand
the Maoris, a stronger race, have been able to
maintain themselves, and have shown them-
selves capable of progress and very ready to
receive Christian teaching. In South Africa
some of the native races have disappeared, but
others show great vitality and capacity, and
are keenly desirous of education. The white
settlers are willing that they should be

182 MISSIONS

taught anything that will make them better
and more industrious workmen, but, as a
rule, they have shown themselves very un-
sympathetic to missionary effort, especially
at the mines. It is difficult for missionaries
to get the heathen to understand the real
nature of Christianity when they see the vices
and drinking habits of the white men who call
themselves Christians, and when they suffer
from their scornful disregard of their rights in
the country which has been taken from them.
The refusal of the white men to worship in
the same church as the coloured people is
another difficulty in the way, though many
who have the welfare of the native at heart,
maintain that it is best for both sides that
there should be as few opportunities of contact
as possible between the white and coloured
races.

It is not only the original inhabitants of the
colonies that claim the thought and attention
of the missionaries, almost every colony now
contains settlements of people of very varied
races Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Malays and
others who have come for purposes of trade
and industry. In England itself there are
colonies of Orientals at our ports who stand

WORK AMONGST COLONISTS 163

in need of Christian teaching. This work is
amongst the most pressing of the calls on
Christian people for service. These men
generally go back to their own country after
a time, and if during their absence in a
Christian land they have been brought under
Christian influence, they may go back to be,
in reality, missionaries to their own people.
Unfortunately, the influences under which
they are brought, and the side of the white
man's civilisation that they see, are often
far from likely to lead them to venerate the
white man's religion. They too often go
home having lost their own original religious
convictions, and having learnt only some of
the white man's vices, and they are far more
likely to be a source of evil than of blessing to
their own people.

CHAPTER IX

THE CIVILISING WOKK OF MISSIONS

THE critics of missions probably do not
realise what a great part they have played
and are playing in the spread of civilisation.
They have been at all times the pioneers of
education and industry in heathen lands.
The object of their educational work was in
the first place to gain converts by preparing
the ground for the reception of Christian
truth; and in the second place to provide
Christian education for the converts and their
children, so that they might train up from
amongst them native teachers and a native
ministry, and so prepare the way for an
independent native Church. But their schools
have almost invariably been open to non-
Christians as well as to Christians, and the
most enlightened opinion at present is against
segregating the native converts in schools

164

CIVILISING WOEK OF MISSIONS 165

of their own. Prominent missionary educa-
tionalists in India are opposed to anything
that would denationalise their converts.
They wish that in high school and college life
they should mix freely with their countrymen
and that the college life should be a training
which shall not shut them off in after years
from intercourse with their fellow-country-
men, and from the full national life.

The government schools in India, being
under the necessity of excluding all religious
teaching, have in the past provided an educa-
tion which enabled students, possessed of
the quick memory and ready intelligence of
the Hindus, to acquire a mass of superficial
knowledge. They become adepts at passing
examinations, in order to be candidates for
government appointments, but which did
little to train their character or influence their
conduct. The mission schools have been free
to pursue a higher educational ideal and to aim
at the development of the whole individual.
They have gained much in efficiency through
government inspection and grants, and the
appreciation of their work by Government has
been shown by the freedom that has been
left to them to pursue their own ideals* The

166 MISSIONS

popular demand for education is greater than
can be supplied at present, and the aid of the
mission schools is welcomed; their experience
is valuable in helping to determine the lines
on which future progress must be made.

What can be done to train and develop
character by plans carefully thought out to
meet special needs, is shown by a school at
Srinagar in Kashmere, under the Rev. C.
Tyndale-Biscoe. He found the Kashmiri
boys very ready to be studious, but untruthful,
conceited, superstitious, cowardly, selfish, and
dirty in their habits. He set himself to make
them strong, athletic, and considerate for
others. With this object he encouraged games
and bodily exercises of all kinds, but allowed
no attempt to stimulate individual exertion
by prizes. In competitions with outsiders it
is the school, not the boy, that wins the prizes.
The boys are taught in every way possible
to help others, by giving aid at fires, by
protecting women from insult, by being kind
to old people and invalids, by rescuing
people from drowning, by preventing cruelty
to animals. All this was very difficult at
first, because, as Brahmins, the boys objected
to any kind of manual work., and to touch

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 167

or In any way minister to persons of inferior
caste. But by patience and continued effort
a spirit of service and a capacity for physi-
cal exertion has been built up. All the
boys are taught to be beautiful swimmers,
a most necessary art for those who live
amongst the water ways of Srinagar. They
work hard in their racing boats and delight
in the sport, but they also take the invalids
from the mission hospital out on the water
for change and fresh air. The influence of
the school is developing their bodies, minds,
and spirits, and making them disciplined,
manly, and considerate of others.

In Kandy, a similar work is being done for
the Singalese by Mr. A. Eraser. His great
desire is to counteract the denationalising
effect of the system of education which pre-
vails in India, and which owes its origin to
Lord Macaulay. As an Indian administrator
Macaulay felt the need of giving the Indians
an education which would bring them in
touch with modern science and modern
thought, but by going too far in that direction
he cut them off from the study of their own
history and literature. In Ceylon students
are to be found, who after passing through

168 MISSIONS

college, know Latin, and even Greek, and can
qualify for the degrees of the London Uni-
versity, but cannot write a letter in their na-
tive language. Education has in consequence
fixed a great gulf between them and their
own people. In Trinity College under Mr.
Eraser's superintendence, the object is to
train men who, though Christians, shall know
and understand the religious beliefs of their
own people, shall have studied their own
history and literature, and by English public
school methods shall be trained in straight-
forwardness and independence of character.
In this way it is hoped to produce men who will
be fit to be leaders and teachers of their own
people, and who will be able to present to them
no merely western Christ, but to teach them
the universal truths of the Gospel in words
which will appeal to their thought and un-
derstanding. The College aims at producing
something better than mere candidates for
examinations. It desires to train Indian
students who shall feel the duty and beauty
of service to their Motherland. In these and
other schools and colleges the missionaries
are helping to discover the kind of education
best suited to Indian needs, and to direct

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 169

wisely the growing national feeling. There
is urgent need that the same work should be
done for Indian girls as is being done for boys,
and to this object women educationalists are
beginning to direct their attention.

It is in the work amongst the outcasts and
pariahs, especially in South India and among
the hill tribes of India, that the missionaries
have achieved the most surprising results, so
that it has been said, that the most powerful
witness borne to Christianity, and the one
which has impressed even hostile Indian
observers, has been the power which the
Christian missionaries have shown to raise
the lowest classes of the community. In
South India the power to do this work is only
limited by the number of people to do it.
Whole villages on every side are ready to
become Christian, and are crying out to have
teachers sent to them. One missionary after
three years* work in South India said that
since he came out he could not recollect the
day on which he had not to say no to villages
asking for Christian teachers. But it is not
even easy to supply the villages already
Christian with the necessary teachers.

Of these Christian villages we are told that

170 MISSIONS

"a glance at the face of the villagers is quite
sufficient to show that one is surrounded by
Christians. The Christians look intelligent,
happy, and fearless; the women are dressed
neatly and cleanly, and the children are as
merry as can be, whereas heathen villagers,
in spite of their gaily coloured clothes, often
look untidy, depressed, and unhappy. Even
the houses show the difference. The orderli-
ness and cleanliness of the palm-thatched
cottage of the Christian is a strong contrast
to the uncomfortable, squalid abode of the
non-Christian . * *

The Karens, the hill tribe livingamongst the
mountains of Burma, are a striking example
of the result of missionary labour. Work was
begun amongst them a hundred years ago,
when they were a people of drunken, super-
stitious and degraded habits. An American
Baptist, Judson, was the first to make any
impression upon them. For the last years
of his life he lived amongst them almost a
hermit's life, occupied in translating the New
Testament for their use. Now fully one-
seventh of the Karens are Christians, an
educated and industrious people, fast building
up a Church and ministry of their own.

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 171

The Kols, a Mil people in Chota Nagpur,
India, were given over to demon-worship,
idle and filthy in their habits, drunken most
of the day and living by begging. They were
first taught by German missionaries, who
found them wild and vicious and quite un-
willing to learn. The missionaries were often
stoned out of the villages, and for five years
no convert was made. Then a change began,
and soon the converts could be counted by
hundreds. When in one district of Chota
Nagpur, the German mission could no longer
be maintained, the Christian Kols of that part,
at their own request, were received into the
Anglican Church. They are now to be found
scattered in over 300 villages, some of which
are entirely Christian. They have become
sober and industrious, and there are many
native clergy ministering to them. The
number of Christian Kols still in connexion
with the German mission is even greater.
Work such as this for raising the outcasts
of India is only limited by the number of
workers.

It is, perhaps, in Africa that the most
conspicuous examples of the civilising work of
missions are to be found. Livingstone had

178 MISSIONS

so impressed England with the needs of
Central Africa, that as a result of Ms exhorta-
tions, the Universities' Mission was founded.
The name itself of this mission was a gain to
the cause, for it showed that the claim of
missions on the best men intellectually as
well as spiritually was being recognised.
The pioneers of this mission suffered terribly
from the climate, and the proportion of deaths
was very large. Only by degrees and after
grievous losses of men were the precautions
learned which enable the missionaries to face
with less risk the constant dangers of the
climate. They had to begin by reducing
Swahili to a written language, and their first
great endeavour was to get the slave trade put
down. The earliest converts were five boys
rescued from a slave dhow and baptised in
1865. Seven years later the slave market
in Zanzibar was closed, and a cathedral was
built where it had been. Bishop Steere, a true
missionary, of whom it was said, that he
never despised the humblest work and plied
chisel or hammer or needle as naturally as
he preached, superintended every detail of
the building, and himself invented the coral
cement of which the roof is made. The

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 173

altar stands on the spot where the slaves 5
whipping-post formerly stood. The work
of this mission extends to Lake Nyassa, and
there, in order to visit the different villages
on the shores and islands of the lake, a steam
launch was a necessity. One was sent up in
1885, being carried all the way up the Zam-
bezi and up the Shire, in thousands of pieces,
packed in 880 cases, and put together at the
lake under the direction of the missionary.

The mission which has been crowned with
the most conspicuous success is that to
Uganda. It owed its origin to the appeal of
another explorer, H. M. Stanley, who told
of the great opportunity and of the willing-
ness of the king to receive a mission. Uganda
is nearly a thousand miles from the coast.
There was then no means of communication
except by walking, and much of the way lay
through low-lying swamps. The enterprise
seemed too difficult and perilous to be contem-
plated, but the interest aroused by Stanley's
journeys was intense. Money was subscribed
and the C.M.S. undertook the mission. Of
the first three men sent out, two were mur-
dered, and the third remained, the one white
man in the heart of Africa, alone for a year.

174 MISSIONS

In 1878 he was joined by Alexander Mackay,
a young Scot, who with a brilliant career as
an engineer before him had felt the com-
pelling call to give Ms life to mission work in
Africa. His hope was "to connect Chris-
tianity with modern civilisation/' and to
train the young men "in religion and science
together." He wanted to execute "public
works, railways, mines, etc." These great
schemes had to wait, but his engineering
skill proved useful to him in many ways.
He set up a lathe, grindstone, forge and
anvil which were most attractive marvels to
the natives. The king, Mtesa, professed
himself anxious for instruction, and was at
times friendly to the missionaries, but at
other times gave way to the wildest outbreaks
of cruelty and vice. At such times he caused
large numbers of men, women and children
to be kidnapped and sacrificed as expiatory
offerings to departed spirits. On one occasion
as many as 2000 innocent people were caught
and killed in this way. The country was
filled with cruelty, oppression and crime of
every kind. Yet the king professed again
and again willingness to hear the missionaries,
and would send for them to his court to

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 175

read and explain the Bible to Mm and his
chiefs.

It was four years before the first five
converts were baptised in Uganda. The
work was made much more difficult by the
arrival of some French Roman Catholic
missionaries,, who told the king that the
Protestants were teaching him nothing but
lies, so that he professed utter bewilderment,
and said: "Every white man has a different
religion, how can I know what is right? 55
The trouble that thus began and ultimately
led to war between the rival factions of
Uganda, was caused partly by political
jealousy, partly by religious animosity. The
French wished to resist the growing influence
of the English in Uganda. Mtesa died with-
out making up his mind to be a Christian,
yet the influence of the missionaries was
sufficiently powerful to prevent the wholesale
slaughter, which in accordance with the
customs of the country, had hitherto followed
a king's death. His son Mwanga who
succeeded him was a youth of cruel and
vicious tendencies. He turned against the
missionaries, and three of his pages who were
converts were slowly burnt to death because

170 MISSIONS

they would not deny their faith. The death
of these boys, the first Uganda martyrs, did
not stop the progress of Christianity. One of
their executioners was so impressed by the
way in which they bore their torture, that he
came to Mackay to be taught to pray himself.
The Church grew, and Mackay worked at
a printing-press with his pupils to provide
translations of portions of the Bible made by
himself for the people.

Other missionaries had been sent from home
to help the first-comers, and now it was
decided to send out a bishop for the growing
Church. Hannington was chosen, and came
to Africa in 1885, He had accomplished the
greater part of the long and dangerous journey
from the coast, when he was seized by a
hostile chief, who kept him prisoner whilst
he sent to King Mwanga to ask what should
be done with the stranger. For eight days
Bishop Hannington waited; the little diary
which he kept during those days was after-
wards found. On one day he writes: "A
terrible night, first with noisy, drunken
guard, and secondly with vermin. I woke
with fever first developing. , . . I am quite
broken down and brought low. Comforted

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 177

by reading 27th Psalm. In an hour or two's
time fever developed very rapidly. My tent
was so stuffy, I was obliged to go inside the
filthy hut, and soon was delirious." The
messengers returned, and soon after he was
led out into the open, and with his party of
fifty porters surrounded and slain, only four
of the men escaping. It was reported by his
murderers that he bade them tell the king
that he died for the Baganda. This murder
was followed by a severe persecution of the
Baganda Christians. Many were burnt alive
and horribly tortured, but some succeeded in
hiding. About 200 perished, showing to the
last their courage and faith. Mackay was
bullied and threatened by the king, but he did
not dare to hurt him. The next years were
very disturbed ones for the mission. Another
bishop was sent out, but died of fever shortly
after his arrival. Many new converts were
made, and there were periods of calm and
peaceful progress, interrupted by attacks from
Arab traders, who overcame the Christians
for a while and determined to make Uganda
Mohammedan. But the Christian party under
the leadership of Christian natives drove them
out in their turn.

178 MISSIONS

Mackay was often left quite alone, and
many at home were in favour of giving up
the mission which had cost so many lives and
suffered such disasters, but Mackay refused
to leave. The famous explorer, Henry Stan-
ley, thus describes a visit to him at this
time: "We entered the circle of tall poles
within which the mission station is built.
There were signs of labour and constant,
unwearying patience. . . . There was a big
solid workshop in the yard, filled with machin-
ery and tools, a launch's boiler was being
prepared by the blacksmiths, a big canoe was
outside repairing, there weresawpits and large
logs of hard timber ... a cattle-fold and a
goat-pen . . . fowls by the score, and out
there trooped a number of little boys and big
boys, looking uncommonly sleek and happy;
and quiet labourers came up to bid us with
hats off, 'good morning/ God knows if ever
man had reason to be doleful and lonely and
sad, Mackay had when, after murdering his
bishop and burning his pupils, and strangling
his converts and clubbing to death his dark
friends, Mwanga turned his eye of death on
him. And yet the little man met it with
calm blue eyes that never winked."

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 179

It was shortly after this visit that Mackay
wrote his last appeal to England for more
help. Mwanga was then friendly, and asked
for hosts of teachers for his people. The
Christians begged that at least twenty more
missionaries should be sent. A month after
he wrote Mackay was struck down by fever.
He died in 1890, after having spent nearly
fourteen years in Africa without ever return-
ing home, and as Stanley wrote, "without
a syllable of complaint or moan among the
wildernesses."

No effort was spared to carry on the work
so well begun. A new bishop was sent out
with several helpers. When after his toilsome
journey Bishop Tucker reached the mission
in Uganda, he was amazed at a what he found.
He wrote: "Truly the half was not told me.
Exaggeration about the eagerness of the
people here to be taught there has been none.
. . . On Sunday I stood up to speak to fully
1000 men and women, who crowded the
church. There close beside me was the Kati-
kiro, the second man in the kingdom. There
on every hand were chiefs of various degrees,
all Christian men, and all in their demeanour
devout and earnest.' ' .

180 MISSIONS

Bishop Tucker was called to be a states-
man as well as a bishop. Difficult questions
troubled the future of Uganda. In the
division of East Africa between England and
Germany, it had been assigned to the English
sphere of influence, and the East African
Company had been formed to open out its
trade. Under the guidance of Captain Lugard
the Company had put down the slave trade
and maintained law and order. But not
getting the support from the British Govern-
ment that had been expected, it decided
that it would have to withdraw from the
occupation of Uganda. This could not fail
to prove disastrous to the mission, and the
withdrawal would have been certain to leave
anarchy behind it and to open the way for
the Arabs to reassert their power and massa-
cre the Christians. It was owing to Bishop
Tucker's influence during a visit to England
that sufficient money was raised to enable the
East African Company to stay another year
in Uganda, after which the British Govern-
ment was persuaded to set up a protectorate
of Uganda, and it was decided to build a
railway to connect it with the coast.

Much anxiety was caused before this by

CIVILISING WORE: OF MISSIONS isi

an outbreak of civil war in Uganda between
the natives belonging to the Protestant
party and those belonging to the Roman
Catholic party. The jealousy of the French
at the English supremacy was the real cause
of this trouble, combined with the treacherous
character of King Mwanga. To get the
British Government to understand the real
state of the case and to help in the peaceful
settlement of affairs after the war, caused
Bishop Tucker great anxiety, and his wisdom
and moderation helped much to procure a
lasting settlement. Through all the troubles
the number of converts steadily grew. They
were taught to administer their own affairs in
their Church Councils, and their zeal amazed
all who saw it for the first time. One mis-
sionary on first arriving wrote : "The services
here are a marvellous sight . . . the crush was
so great and the eagerness to secure good
places. . . . Outside were hundreds of people
who could hear distinctly through the walls,
which are of reeds/ 5 The Baganda showed
an extraordinary eagerness for books. One
Sunday it was announced that a supply of
books had arrived, and that the Gospels of
St. Matthew would be sold early the next

188 MISSIONS

morning. The missionary was roused before
daylight by a roar of voices. He tried to barri-
cade the door to keep the people outside
but "barricades were useless in came the
door, and we thought the whole place would
have fallen. In ten minutes all the hundred
Gospels were sold." As each new box of books
was opened the same scene was repeated;
the eagerness was so great that the missionary
could hardly find time to eat, and "when
everything was sold there were still a thousand
or more people waiting about, each *mad to
buy a book/ "

The work rapidly extended; women mission-
aries and doctors joined the mission staff,
Baganda clergy were ordained, and Baganda
teachers carried the Christian teaching to
the surrounding villages. Bishop Tucker's
policy has been to try in every way to
develop a native self-governing Church;
the churches are built in native fashion,
the teachers are supported by the people
themselves, and what is more, the Baganda
Church realises the duty of being a missionary
Church itself. King Mwanga proved a trouble
to the last, but his son, the present king, has
been a Christian from his infancy, and the

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 183

Katikiro, or Prime Minister, Kagwa Apolo,
who suffered persecution in bis youth for
Ms faith, has lived the life of a true Christian
statesman, guiding his country in the path
of real progress. He visited England for
the Coronation of Edward VII, and was
knighted by the King.

In another quarter of Africa a great
chief has shown what a Christian ruler can
do for his country. Khama, the chief of
Bechuanaland, was at his father's wish taught
by a German missionary and baptised whilst
still a boy. He married a Christian wife,
and grew up determined to live a consistent
Christian life. His first troubles were with
his father, who remained a heathen to the
last, and was furious when his son would
not share in the disgusting heathen rites of
his people and refused to marry a second wife.
He declared that Khama should not succeed
him, and tried several times to have him
murdered, so that at last Khama was driven
with his wife and family and a few faithful
followers to take refuge in the hills. Called
back to help his father, who had been driven
out by a revolt, Khama, famous as a soldier
and for his coolness in danger, subdued his

184 MISSIONS

father's enemies, but still found it hopeless
to try to live with. him. On his father's
death, when he became chief himself, he set
himself at once to carry out his Christian
principles in his methods of ruling his people.
In order to do this he had to face many diffi-
culties. First he had to put down the hateful
witch doctors, whose lies made the lives of
the Bechuana a constant terror. Next he had
to stop many heathen customs, the killing of
weakly children, the plan of allowing useless
old people to starve, the right of a man to
kill his wife, and many horrible punishments.
Hardest of all was his struggle against the
drinking habits which were ruining his people.
He gathered the people together and told
them that they were utterly degraded by
the great beer drinkings which always followed
the harvest, and that in future he entirely
forbade them to make or drink the native
beer, a most intoxicating liquor made from
fermented corn. The people went away in
angry discontent, prepared to rebel against
this intolerable order. Ehama said in after
years: "I withstood my people at the risk
of my life." When he was remonstrated
with, he answered: "Beer is the source

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 185

of all quarrels and disputes. I will stop
it." It needed long and patient work to
get Ms prohibition enforced, but success
came at last, and in a Blue-book issued
in 1888 it is written: "It would require
no police to manage the native part of the
town. By his determination and courage
Khama has put down strong drink, and pre-
vented traders bringing it into his country,"
It was with the traders that Khama had his
last great struggle. They insisted upon being
allowed to bring in brandy for their own use,
and again and again were discovered selling it
to the natives. At last, when they would not
desist, Khama banished two of the ring-
leaders from his country, treating them,
however, with the greatest consideration.
These men, determined "not to be beaten
by a nigger," tried to stir up trouble against
Khama, and finally returned with a party of
men, amongst whom was a Boer. Khama
sent some of his soldiers to turn them out,
and in the fighting the Boer was killed.
This led to an investigation by the Trans-
vaal and British authorities. The English
Administrator who heard the case was
much impressed by Khama's conduct and

186 MISSIONS

bearing, and wrote: "His character entitles
Mm to the respect and affection with which
he is plainly regarded by his people, and to
the esteem entertained for him by all unpre-
judiced Europeans who have come in contact
with him." Khama himself ordered a severe
punishment for his soldiers because they had
gone beyond his orders, sentencing them to six
years' hard labour, but he showed no yielding
on the drink question. "It were better for
me," he said to the Administrator, "that
I should lose my country than that it should
be flooded with drink. I fear Lobengula
(the Matabele chief) less than I fear brandy.
Lobengula never gives me a sleepless night,
But to fight against drink is to fight against
demons not against men. I dread the white
man's drink more than the assegais of the
Matabele, which kill men's bodies and all is
quickly over, but drink puts devils into men
and destroys both their souls and their bodies
for ever."

As years went on, Khama had the wisdom
to see that it would be difficult for him to
maintain his independence in the midst of
the various forces that were struggling for
power in Africa. He decided to put him-

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 187

self directly under the protectorate of the
English Queen, stipulating only "that his
people should enjoy their cultivated lands,
their cattle stations and their hunting
grounds/* He has proved a loyal and faithful
ally under many difficult and trying condi-
tions. In every way this African chief has
carried out in practical life the Christian
faith which he holds. Of unblemished
courage, he has been loyal in his dealings
both to friends and foes. He has ruled his
people like a father, sitting every morning in
his great courtyard, which is kept spotlessly
clean, to hear complaints, petitions or dis-
putes. He rides everywhere about his coun-
try, visiting the villages and the fields, and
encouraging the people to better methods of
cattle rearing and agriculture. Every year the
digging season is begun with a meeting for
prayer. On Sundays a great congregation,
often of 2000 people, gathers for worship.
They met at first on the hillside, but by degrees
gathered the money needed to build a great
church. Khama's chief town was moved by
his orders to a new site, where better water
could be procured, and the newtown, Palapwe,
was carefully planned and laid out, but all in

188 MISSIONS

native style, Khama himself living in a hut
but little larger than any one else's. He
has built large airy school-rooms where the
children are taught to read and write, and
have regular instruction in the Bible from
teachers trained by the missionaries. Khama's
wife has helped him in every possible way and
they have brought up their children with lov-
ing care. A Blue-book reporting about him
says: "Khama rules the tribe more by kind-
ness than by severity. He is probably the
best example of what a black man can become
by means of a good disposition and of
Christianity."

In 1911 high festival was kept at Khama's
capital city, to celebrate the jubilee of the
baptism of Khama. A deputation of the
London Missionary Society, the society to
which he owed his conversion, went to cele-
brate the occasion with him. They were
met by Khama at the head of a body-
guard of about 8000 soldiers. The fol-
lowing day began at sunrise with a prayer-
meeting of 4000 men; and in the afternoon
were sports and festivities. The next day
was Sunday, and began with the baptism of
103 converts. Then came a service at which

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 189

12,000 people were present, the soldiers form-
ing a circle round the women and the old men
who were seated on the ground. The week
went on with festivities of many kinds,
military games as well as solemn services.
Ehama himself spoke grave words to his
people, saying: "This is a thing which has
come from God, and you know that God is
stronger than we are, and has more power,
and if we continue in the service of God we
shall be a nation still. . . . You know that the
one thing that destroys our work and is
a great enemy to our work is Drink. Intoxi-
cating drink is a great chief in the country."
He ended by warning them against the sins
of their forefathers, and with a warm welcome
to his white visitors.

These few examples have been selected to
show in some detail the civilising effect of
missions. They might be multiplied in-
definitely. It was the voice of the Baptist
missionaries on the Congo that made known
to Europe the atrocities perpetrated in
the country which Leopold, King of the
Belgians, had promised to develop for the
good of the natives, but where he allowed
them to be exploited and ruined with the

190 MISSIONS

most horrible cruelty for the good of his
shareholders. It is missionaries again who
have done most to awaken the conscience of
Europe to the havoc wrought by opium in
China, and the shame attaching to the
English Government for having in the past
forced opium upon China for the sake of
commercial advantage. Missionaries are still
labouring to convince the world of the wrong
done by the liquor traffic to the primitive
peoples of Africa. It is their work everywhere
to strive to protect the rights of the native
races from those who, whether as individuals
or Governments, seek to exploit them for the
sake of trade without any consideration of
their real advantage. In the past they
helped to bring about the suppression of
the slave trade, and they are still working for
the abolition of the system of forced labour,
which, as their experience shows them, in-
evitably leads to the oppression of helpless
peoples. But whilst they object to forced
labour, one of the first objects of missionaries
amongst primitive peoples is to train them
in habits of work and to teach them industries
of all kinds. This is to be seen to a notable
extent in many of the Roman Catholic Mis-

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 191

sions and also in the Presbyterian Mis-
sions in Africa, especially in the great settle-
ment of Lovedale, which is a real school of
industry for the natives. This result of
missionary effort is praised even by those who
have no sympathy with its higher aims.

Missionaries have not only done much for
civilisation, they have also done much for
science. All over the world they have been
the first to reduce illiterate languages to
writing, to make grammars for them, to pro-
vide them with translations of the Bible and
other books. They have been foremost
amongst discoverers and explorers of un-
known lands, and their studies of the customs
of primitive peoples have been a most impor-
tant contribution to ethnology. Many of
them have been distinguished as naturalists,
geographers and scientific observers, and their
letters home, from the days of the earliest
Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries to the
present time, are an important contribution
to our knowledge of the world.

It is common for travellers and superficial
observers to criticise adversely the methods
of missionaries and the results of their work,
but before attending to what they say it is

192 w MISSIONS

well to examine the sources of their knowledge,
and to discover whether their own experience
and observation of what is being done has
given them any right to criticise. On the
other side, there is much evidence from official
Blue-books and reports, as well as from the
statements of some of the most experienced
administrators and some of the most observant
travellers in other lands to show the value of
the missionaries' work.

Lord Lawrence once said: "Notwithstand-
ing all that the English people have done
to benefit India, the missionaries have done
more than all other agencies combined."
Another distinguished Indian administrator.
Sir Mackworth Young, said in 1900: "The
work done by missionary agency exceeds in
importance all that has been done (and much
has been done) by the British Government
since its commencement. The most potent
influence that has been working amongst the
people since annexation is Christianity as set
forth in the lives of Christian missionaries/ 5
Not least amongst the results of the activities
of Christians in India has been the effect
produced upon the leading classes of the
population in compelling them to emulate

CIVILISING WORK OF MISSIONS 193

the work of the missionaries by philanthropic
and educational work of their own.

Captain Younghnsband gives some interest-
ing pictures of the Roman Catholic Missions
he visited on his travels in Manchuria. He
speaks of a bishop who had lived in the
country for over thirty years and died there;
his whole village was Christian; the mission-
ary had begun by educating the children as
Christians, and they, when they grew to be
men, brought up their children as Christians.
They were sincere and devout in their Sunday
worship, and seemed like a different race
from the cold, hard, heathen Chinamen in the
other villages round. In the far inland parts
of China, Younghusband visited in a remote
spot three French priests, whom he describes
as not only good men, but real men types of
pure, genuine goodness. They had gone out
for their whole lives and were absolutely cut
off from the world. "Their strong simple
natures were bound to affect for good all
who met them. They were not dull or stern
or morbid, but had a fund of simple joviality
and were full of spirits, with just a sigh when
they spoke of c la belle France, 5 which they
were never to see again."

194 MISSIONS

It is the great strength, of tiie Roman
Missions that so many of the missionaries,
both men and women members of religious
orders, go out to the mission field for life and
never return. The orders provide a constant
supply of successors, and they are therefore
able to man their missions with less difficulty
than other religious bodies. Captain Young-
husband summarises his impressions of mis-
sions by saying: "The traveller through
strange countries cannot help recognising
that there is something in the Christian
religion vastly superior to others, but he
sees that these latter have much that is good
and true in them also . . . those who desire
to be leaders in a religion and to gain adher-
ents for it, must study in a sympathetic man-
ner the religions of others . . . they will be
able to slowly raise the moral standard of those
among whom they live, and give those who
are more ignorant a higher conception of the
Deity . . . this is what the best missionaries
are doing in China and have been doing for
years and years."

CHAPTER X

THE PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS

IT Is not easy to present a comprehensive
view of the present condition of mission work
amongst non-Christian peoples, but some
attempt must be made to give an idea of the
progress made in the last hundred years.
We have seen that the Roman Church has
always been a missionary Church, and has
ever regarded missions as part of its activity
as a Church. The task has been attacked
with varying energy; there have been periods
of slackness, of almost entire neglect followed
by great revivals, the revivals being generally
due to the creation of new religious orders.
It is not possible to arrive at any very exact
statement of the amount of their mission
work amongst non-Christians, or to compare
their statistics with those of Protestant
missions, since no uniform system of statistics
has ever been followed. As far as can be

195

196 MISSIONS

ascertained there are In the non-Christian
world about 9,000,000 Roman Catholic con-
verts, including both baptised and cate-
chumens, and about 5,300,000 Protestant;
whilst there are nearly 8000 Roman priests
and 5,500 ordained Protestant missionaries,
besides the women, the medical and other
lay-missionaries. It is a large force, but the
work before it is enormous, and those who
know the history of the spread of Christianity
during the early centuries of our era will
readily see that there is no cause for dis-
couragement in the progress made since the
Reformed Churches awoke to a sense of their
missionary responsibility.

In Japan, where for long centuries all doors
were closed to teachers from outside, Christi-
anity has become naturalised, and there are
among the Japanese Christians men possess-
ing the character and ability to manage their
own Churches, and to enable them to a large
extent to do without outside help* This is
the work of the last fifty years. Japanese
Church organisations are being formed in
connexion with the different religious de-
nominations, for the Japanese wish that their

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 197

Church should express the national spirit.
The strengthening of these churches is of
vital importance for the future of the East,
where at present Japan is the leading and
progressive nation. The educated Japanese
are drifting away from their old religions,
and are for the most part naturalistic and
agnostic. No religion is taught in the State
schools. In the words of a distinguished
Japanese statesman. Count Okuma: "The
old religion and the old morals are steadily
losing their hold, and nothing has as yet risen
to take their place/ 3 The great University
of Tokio swarms with students from all
parts of the far East among them are 3000
Chinese. These students have for the most
part thrown off their old beliefs and found
nothing else to satisfy them. Here is the
great opportunity of Christianity. There is
no hostility to it, but the movement in its
favour, which began some twenty years ago,
has been checked, mainly owing to the reports
brought back by Japanese visitors to Western
lands. Shocked at the social evils of the
West, at the slums and poverty which they
saw, they became doubtful of the power of

198 MISSIONS

Christianity to regenerate the world. There
are, however, Japanese Christians to be found
in many prominent positions, and the import-
ance of the Christians in Japan is quite out
of proportion to their numbers. Amongst
them were to be found in 1910, fourteen
members of the House of Representatives,
an admiral, officers both in the Army and
the Navy, a Cabinet Minister, and several
judges. The Government welcomes the as-
sistance of the missionaries in many kinds
of philanthropic work. They are allowed to
visit criminals in prison, and by the conversion
of the officials and their wives and most of
the prisoners, have made one large prison
with 2000 inmates into a sort of Christian
community.

Most of the leaders amongst the Japanese
converts, and many prominent persons in
Japan, amongst them the editors of at least
twenty of the leading journals, were educated
in mission schools. The influence of these
schools is said to have "inspired the new
literature of Japan, to have vitalised its new
civilisation with spiritual ideas, and to have
been on the side of righteousness and purity

PRESENT EXTENT OP MISSIONS 199

In national, family and private life." Now
that the Government has seriously under-
taken the work of education, it is hard for
the mission schools to become as efficient as
the State-aided schools, and the tendency is
for the missions to devote their energies to
training colleges for clergy and teachers, and
to providing hostels for the students in great
educational centres. There is a growing desire
for the establishment of a Christian University.

In Japan is to be found the only important
mission of the Orthodox Church outside
the boundaries of the Russian Empire. At
its head was a saintly Archbishop, Nicolai,
honoured by men of all communions, who
died early in 1912. Some 30,000 Japanese
belong to that Church, and its services are
conducted with all the reverent and elaborate
ceremonial that prevails in Moscow itself.

Korea was long a closed country to foreign-
ers. After it was opened missionaries soon
penetrated into the unknown land. No
country has responded more quickly to their
teaching. There are now 200,000 Christians,
of whom about 64,000 are Roman Catholics.
The numbers are rapidly increasing, and the

200 MISSIONS

Koreans show themselves not only ready
hearers, but eager missionaries as soon as
they have learned the truth. The number of
converts grows rapidly. There is one Church
that in a space of sixteen years has grown
into five Churches, and yet the original con-
gregation still numbers ,500, and is so large
that the men and women have to meet
separately. The Koreans are a poor people,
but already their Churches are largely self-
supporting, and those who cannot give money
give work, offering to give themselves for some
fixed number of days in the year to the work
of evangelists. Women have cut off their hair
that it might be sold for the mission. Revival
preaching has produced a great effect upon
the Koreans, who have been won by thousands
in this way. The Bible is the book which
has the largest sale amongst the Korean
people; they have a respect for learning, and
the mission schools are helping much in the
spread of general education and in the raising
up of a native ministry. A Korean Christian,
speaking in 1910 of the present state of things
in his country, said that the rapid conversion
of the people would prove a danger unless

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 201

the number of missionaries could be increased,
for the people needed thorough teaching that
the foundations of the Church of the future
might be laid wide and deep.

The task of evangelising the countless
millions of China is one that has had the
strongest fascination for the Church of Christ
since the days when the first travellers who
penetrated into the unknown land brought
back the tales of what they had seen and heard.
The work of the Roman Church, which was
carried on with so much success by the
Jesuits, left comparatively little remaining
after the expulsion of that order, and the
present condition of the Roman Church in
China, with its total of about a million adher-
ents and its large number of Chinese priests
and nuns, is mainly due to the activities
of the last hundred years. The Imperial De-
cree procured by the French Minister in 1899
gave their missionaries a political rank and
status, and their bishops now rank with
the governors of the provinces. The British
Minister offered to secure a similar status for
the Anglican bishops, but they refused it,
preferring to remain independent of politics.

MISSIONS

The Roman Catholic churches are large and
prominent, and they have fine schools,
hospitals and orphanages.

The number of converts made by the
missions of the Reformed Churches is barely
half the number of Roman Catholics. The
work of missions was much hindered by the
wars by which England compelled China to
open her ports to trade and forced opium
upon her. The treaties which made it possible
for the missionaries to enter the country
brought also the opium, and this cast a
shadow over the Christian Missions. The
missionaries have been hated as foreigners
rather than as teachers of a new religion.
The Chinese, as a result of their long seclusion,
are contemptuous, cold and conceited, but
the wall of isolation which began slowly to
break down in the latter half of the nineteenth
century is now rapidly disappearing. In
Manchuria in 1872 there was no baptised
Christian belonging to a Protestant Churcli.
Three were baptised the next year by an
American missionary, and these first converts
at once felt it their duty to teach to their
countrymen what they had learned. There

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 203

are now 30,000 baptised Christians, with
many native ministers supported by their own
people besides hundreds of thousands of
people interested in Christianity. It is said
that the vast majority of the converts were
made by the Manchurian Christians them-
selves, and that as a result of their work
idolatry is dead in Manchuria.

The edict of toleration, published by the
Chinese Emperor in 1844, made it possible
for missionaries to penetrate into the far
interior of the country, and they are to be
found now in every province, though their
numbers are utterly inadequate to the
tremendous task before them. All alike
realise that it is only by the agency of native
evangelists that the vast population of China
can ever be converted. It is, therefore, the
first object of the missionaries to train up
men and women to be teachers and leaders
of their fellow countrymen, and for this
purpose to provide schools and theological
colleges. The Americans have been especially
active in missionary work in China, and their
educational and medical missions are well
equipped and admirably organised* Many

MISSIONS

Chinese students pass on from them to com-
plete their studies in America. The English
have more particularly devoted themselves
to direct evangelisation, and to translating
and distributing the Bible and other litera-
ture. They too however are increasingly
giving themselves to educational work. The
missionary as he teaches in the schools un-
consciously teaches the civilisation which
has been built up under the influence of
Christianity. Christian ideas slowly per-
meate and affect Chinese public opinion, and
the way in which the Chinese have been
imbued with them can be seen in the change
of attitude with regard to opium smoking,
footbinding and slavery. There is a very
large proportion of women amongst the
missionaries in China, as the work of raising
the women is considered of the first import-
ance, since upon them the superstitious ideas
of the old religion have the strongest hold.
Though hitherto despised and uneducated
their influence on the children and in the
homes is all-powerful, and on them the
building up of Christian homes in the future
must depend. The Chinese Christians are

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 05

conspicuous by their cheerfulness and happi-
ness when the Christian hope takes the
place of the cheerless outlook of oriental
life. We hear of the beatific expression on
the faces of some of the superior converts.
They have also shown their courage and
persistency under cruel persecution. In the
Boxer rising 30,000 Roman Catholic and
10,000 Protestant converts perished, though
many of them could have saved their lives
by trampling on a piece of paper bearing the
name of Jesus. A great work still lies before
the Christian Church in China, but all feel
that the future will lie in the hands of the
Chinese Christians. They want their own
Church, not a foreign Church, as one of them-
selves has said: "The controlling power of
the Christian Church in China has largely
been in the hands of foreign missionaries, and
there is no doubt that it should have been so
in the days gone by; but the time has come
when every Chinese Christian should realise
and undertake this responsibility." But to
help them to build up that Church they still
ask urgently for the help of the foreign
missionary.

06 MISSIONS

Of all mission fields India is probably the
one which has attracted the most attention
from all parts of Christendom and from every
variety of religious organisation. The Chris-
tian Churches of all countries of the world
have naturally regarded India, ever the home
of religion, as their great opportunity. If
India could become Christian, it would not
only ensure the Christianity of the East but
enrich the Christianity of the West. The
progress of Christianity in India during the
past fifty years has been steady and ever
increasing in rapidity. The last census re-
turns show that whilst the total increase of
the population has been 6A per cent., the
Christians have increased 11.6 per cent. This
increase in the Punjab amounted to 400
per cent. To a still greater extent it may be
said that Christian thought is influencing
Indian thought and ideals. There are many
men and perhaps more women who are
Christians at heart, but have not the courage
to come forward for baptism. Baptism means
the breaking of caste, hence the utter separa-
tion from family and friends; it has often
seemed to a man to involve even the giving

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 207

up of his country and becoming the member
of a foreign community. The influence of
Christianity therefore cannot be measured by
the number of converts. Canon Brown, head
of the Oxford Mission to Calcutta, writes:
" Nothing is more common, as one travels about
Bengal, than to get into conversation with
some native fellow-traveller who by and by
tells you he would like to be a Christian, but
is withheld by family considerations." It is
amongst the outcasts, amongst the masses
of Southern India, that there are the largest
number of converts. Probably the motive
for conversion is feeble and inadequate in
the majority of cases, but the preparation of
these people for baptism, their training in the
Christian life afterwards, is a task which
enables the missionary to bear a most effective
witness to his faith. A Brahmin Commis-
sioner, writing of the miserable condition of
the outcasts, and the effect of Christianity in
humanising and raising them, says: "The
Brahmin community of southern India are not
doing what the casteless Britisher is doing . . .
our organisation as the chief caste of the Hindu
community does not provide help or means

208 MISSIONS

of relief for them. We have regular insti-
tutions all over India for doing charity to
Brahmins, but none either inculcated in book
or practised by our ancestors to the outcasts.
The credit of going to the houses of the low,
the depressed and the dirty, and putting the
shoulder to the wheel of depraved humanity,
belongs to the Englishman/'

Though the number of converts is greatest
amongst the outcasts, Christianity has pene-
trated much more deeply among the educated
as an influence on thought. The small number
of converts amongst the educated is claimed
by some as being in one sense an advantage,
because it enables the utmost individual
attention to be given to each. These men
exercise an influence upon public opinion
quite out of proportion to their numbers.
They are preparing the way for others. The
slowly permeating influence of Christianity
is by degrees "changing the ideas of the
Indian nation, destroying its intellectual
idols, raising its conception of morals." So
far there has been a lack of leaders amongst
the Indian Christians. The national char-
acteristics are not of the kind likely to make

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 209

leaders, and tlie missionaries have perhaps
been too slow to give responsibility to the
Indians. But all missions are coming to see
the necessity for training Indian leaders and
trusting them with real responsibility, and
also for making the Indian Christians do more
for the support of their own Churches. This
is a difficult matter, especially amongst the
country folk, on accountof their great poverty.
But in the Christian villages of the Punjab, of
which there are many, the people bring of their
substance to the church collections on Sunday,
rice, corn, flour, butter or a kid, and poor
coolies will give as much in money as half a
day's wages. In the south it is a common
practice for the Christian women to put a
handful of rice aside in a basket for the church
each time a meal is prepared, and this basket
of rice is brought to the church once a month.
The Indian Christians have been much
slower than the Chinese or the Koreans to
show any missionary activity themselves, but
of late years they have formed some Indian
missionary organisations, and alongside of
the growing national feeling is an increasing
desire for an Indian Church. If the con-

210 MISSIONS

version of India is to be accomplished its
peoples must learn that Christianity is not a
Western religion; it needs teachers of their
own race to present to them the universal
Christ in a manner which shall appeal to
their Eastern minds.

Missionary activity in India embraces every
kind of work, from the highest educational
and medical work to the teaching of the most
ignorant peasant. Many varied opinions pre-
vail as to which kind of work is the most
important at the present juncture, but all are
agreed that the work amongst the women,
and the uplifting of their social position, is
one of the most crying needs. This is work
which requires Christian women of high
attainments and wide and understanding
sympathies* The change in the position of
Indian women which is beginning is nothing
less than a social revolution, and it will be
an irretrievable disaster for India if the Indian
woman, in her coming emancipation from her
old conditions and from the religious sanctions
which hedged in her life and conduct, gains
nothing to take their place. The women mis-
sionaries in India have a deep responsibility

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 211

laid upon them in helping the Indian women
to frame new ideals for themselves which shall
preserve the best of the old whilst adding to
them the liberty of the Christian.

Though there are missions belonging to
almost every religious body and sent by many
different nations, the mission force is wholly
inadequate for the great work that lies before
it amongst the teeming masses of India. It
would be true to say that almost every mission
is undermanned, whilst it sees before it vast
opportunities of extension which it is unable
to seize for lack of funds and workers. In
some few centres there is overlapping by the
different religious organisations, which shows
the disadvantages of the want of unity and
the consequent lack of statesmanship in
organising the work to be done by the
different denominations. But the general
estimate is that if Christian teaching is to
be carried into all parts of India, the number
of missionaries should be increased fourfold.
Even as it is, the situation in spite of
many grave difficulties, is full of hope and
encouragement. For fifty years at least the
advance has been steady, even in numbers.

212 MISSIONS

The number of ordained Indian ministers has
increased f ortyf old. But mere numbers give
no test of the real progress. The missions are
most of them full of life and enterprise, manned
with 'workers of real thought and power, who
are ever alert to discover the best way of
presenting the truth to the Indian people and
connecting it with their own rich religious
heritage. The progress of Christianity has
led to revival movements amongst some of
the Indian religions, which have copied certain
Christian methods, and shown a desire to
assimilate Christian truth and claim Christ
for their own systems. This tendency makes
it all the more imperative that the missionary
should understand the religious beliefs of the
Indian peoples, and that Christendom should
recognise how, in the words of Bishop Lefroy,
at the present time "almost everything is
in solution and the direction largely undeter-
mined.'* and hence the urgent need that
"Christianity should really enter as a potent
factor, able in greater or less degree to exercise
that commanding influence which is hers by
right, if only she is given a chance."
In Burma the conditions of missionary

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 213

work are much the same as In India. The
greatest progress has been made amongst the
hill tribes who show an astonishing eagerness
to embrace Christianity. The Burmese are
Buddhists, as are also most of the people in
Ceylon, and amongst them of late there has
been a considerable revival encouraged by
European residents who have taken an
interest in Buddhism. Some of these have
even been numbered amongst its adherents.
The Buddhists have copied many Christian
methods and are using aggressive measures
to spread their teaching.

In Siam there is but little being done by
Christian Missions, and French Indo-China is
closed to all except Roman Catholics. These
countries were in former days the starting-
point for missions to China. In Singapore
and British Borneo the English missionary
societies minister to their own people, and carry
on besides as much mission work as their
resources allow. The Dutch East Indies have
been largely overrun by Mohammedans.
There is a considerable amount of activity
shown by Dutch missionary agencies. Much
success has been gained by the Rhenish Mis-

214 MISSIONS

sionary Society during the last fifty years
amongst the Bataks, a hill people living in the
interior of Sumatra. The Bataks were sunk
in the most savage paganism and the darkest
superstition, and for a time resisted all efforts
to teach them. The missionaries were in con-
stant danger of their lives among these rude
cannibals, who only wished to rid the land of
them. By degrees a few were won over, and
then whole communities followed, impelled to
act together by the strong corporate sense
which characterises these people. The civilis-
ing work of the Dutch Government in making
roads and introducing order assisted the
spread of Christianity and now more than a
sixth of the Bataks are Christians, with many
native ordained ministers and teachers, and
the tribes that are still heathen are asking for
teachers and schools. This mission is another
example of the rapid progress that can be made
when the native Christians give themselves
with zeal to the conversion of their country-
men.

The vast group of islands called Melanesia
and the great island of New Guinea have
been the scene of heroic labours on the part

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS

of missionaries, which have led to the sacrifice
of many noble lives. The work has been full
of difficulty owing to the incredible variety of
languages and dialects, but it has met with
rich success. Many islands are entirely Chris-
tian, and have themselves provided teachers
for the other islands, so that the work of
evangelisation is largely in the hands of native
missionaries. The Papuan has a special fit-
ness for this work. He can travel lightly
equipped, he is capable of great endurance,
and he is eager to give Ms message, proving
in that way the usefulness of the desire inborn
in the native to pass on information. So the
good news of the Gospel is borne from village
to village. The Papuan also has great facility
in learning the native dialects, and the com-
munal system of village life natural to them
helps the native Christians to realise their
responsibility for one another; they are very
faithful and loyal to their missionaries,
and can be trusted to carry out any work thej
are given to do. Much of the mission work
carried on in New Guinea is supported bj
Australians. But in some parts of Australia
help is still needed from England for thei]

216 MISSIONS

own mission work. Men are wanted for the
bush brotherhoods that minister amongst the
settlers, and both men and money are needed
for work amongst the aboriginals who still
survive. These aboriginals are to be found
chiefly in the north and the north-west, and
have been very much neglected in the past and
even horribly ill-treated by settlers. There are
some 80,000 black men still remaining, wild,
untamed savages who, under the care of the
missionaries, are learning to till the ground
and to lead an ordered and settled life. There
is also need for mission work amongst the
Chinese, Japanese and other non-Christian
peoples who come to northern Australia for
purposes of trade.

In New Zealand the native population, the
Maoris, have for the most part become
Christians. The treatment they received from
the early settlers, who wished to exterminate
them, led to many fierce wars, for they are
a sturdy and independent race. Bishop Sel-
wyn showed himself their friend, and was
active in promoting their evangelisation. The
Maori Christians were eager missionaries
themselves from the first, some of them

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 217

suffering martyrdom for their faith. There
are Maori clergy now ministering to their
own people.

The Polynesian Islands have been the
centre of much missionary effort for about
a hundred years, and now heathenism has
practically disappeared from amongst them.
The native Church has developed organisation
of its own, and, with relapses here and there,
a Christian standard of life is maintained*
The stage of evangelism is over; it remains
to be seen how the life of the Church will
progress and develop. The missionaries have
established communications between the dif-
ferent islands, and civilisation has followed
the missionary enterprise.

The difficulty of mission work in the vast
continent of Africa is enormously increased
by the deadliness of the climate in many
parts, by the vast extent of the area to be
covered, and the comparative scantiness of
the population, which uses, moreover, an
endless variety not only of dialects, but of
distinct languages. At least one hundred
different translations of the Bible have been
needed for use in Africa. The conditions

218 MISSIONS

of the African peoples are for the most part
still primitive; they have lived shut off from
civilisation, torn by intertribal wars, de-
vastated by slave raiding. The work of the
missionary is to bring civilisation as well as
religion, but in most cases he has little to build
upon. He has to teach habits of work, to
introduce industries and education, to reduce
languages to writing, to teach respect for
property and human life. Some of the largest
and most successful missions in Africa have
been industrial, and have taken the form
of settlements comprising schools, workshops,
and farms which, whilst educating and train-
ing the children, spread their civilising effect
over the neighbouring districts.

The great menace to Africa is the rapid
advance of Islam, which has been assisted
by the opening-up of the country under the
protection of the various European powers,
amongst whom the continent has been
divided up. In Egypt, the Soudan, and the
vast districts of East Africa and Hausaland,
British policy has been influenced by the
fear of provoking disorder and outbursts
of fanaticism, and the tendency has been

PRESENT EXTENT OP MISSIONS 219

to encourage the Moslems at the expense of
the Christians, and to hinder missionaries from
preaching to Moslems. The strength of the
Moslem power is naturally in Egypt, and all
along the north of Africa the people are
mainly Moslems. The French Order of the
White Fathers, founded by Cardinal Lavi-
gerie, works for their conversion in the French
colony of Algiers and the desert behind.
The Fathers suffer from difficulties put into
their way by the French Government, which
does not wish the Moslems to be interfered with.
Their work, and that of other religious orders,
has spreadfarther andfarther into the interior.
In all Africa the Roman Catholics have over
1500 mission priests, but so far they have not
built up a native priesthood; there are only
some ten native priests, besides the priests of
the ancient Coptic and Ethiopian Churches,
which are in communion with Rome. Many
nuns and lay-brothers help in the work of
the missions, teaching in the schools, and
working in the fields side by side with the
natives to encourage them in habits of
industry. In Uganda, in Nyassaland, and
elsewhere, the Roman Catholic and Protestant

220 MISSIONS

Missions have come into contact with one
another, sometimes with most unfortunate
results.

On the west coast of Africa are some long-
established missions going back to the day
when Sierra Leone was founded (1786) as
a settlement for slaves rescued from the
slave ships. The work here had special
difficulties from the first, and it was only
the patient labours of successive missionaries
that brought order into the strange community
of rescued slaves gathered from many different
tribes and peoples, and taught them industries
and civilised habits. Now most of the people
there are Christians, and there are schools
and colleges where many native clergy have
been educated. A rescued slave boy, Crow-
ther, grew up to be the first native bishop
of the Anglican Church. There are now two
native bishops in West Africa, and the native
Church itself does much mission work amongst
the heathen tribes inland and gives generously
for its support. All down the west coast
the labours of the European missionaries are
constantly hindered by the deadly climate.
The number of missionaries is far from

PRESENT EXTENT OP MISSIONS

sufficient, and the native CImrclies are not
yet strong enough to stand entirely alone.
For the most part the peoples of the coun-
try inland are untouched. It is being
opened up to trade, and in these newly
opened districts the white man is looked
upon not as a bringer of the good news
of the Gospel, but as a disturber of existing
conditions and the representative of a superior
and alien power. Yet the natives who come
in contact with the missions constantly ask
that teachers should be sent to their villages
also, and the only hindrance to the further
extension of mission work, with its civilising
and educational activities, lies in the paucity
of the workers.

Missions from many different countries, and
belonging to many different denominations,
are at work all along the vast stretch of the
West African coast, and extend also up the
Congo river and into the Congo Free State.
The difficulties of the work there were terribly
increased by the awful cruelties inflicted by
the Belgian officials. The coming of the white
man seemed nothing but a curse to a country
which, when Stanley first discovered it, ap-

MISSIONS

peared to be full of promise for the future.
But the natives have learned to recognise
the difference between the missionaries and
the officials, and there is every reason to
hope that better methods of government are
now being introduced by the Belgian
authorities*

In South Africa, mission work amongst the
native races has long been carried on. It
has its special difficulties caused by the
mingling of the white and coloured races, and
the consequent racial animosities, jealousies
and antagonisms. There is a feeling amongst
some of the white population that the native
is spoilt by education and by being converted
to Christianity. His labour is needed on the
land and in the mines for the development of
the country, and it is maintained that edu-
cation and conversion will make him less
tractable to his employers. But the value
of the missions to the native population was
fully recognised by the "Government Com-
mission on Native Affairs," which reported
in 1905, and stated that "for the moral
improvement of the natives there is available
no influence equal to that of religious belief ";

PRESENT EXTENT OP MISSIONS 223

and that "one great element for the civilisa-
tion of the natives is to be found in Christian-
ity." There is need for much effort to
counteract the disastrous effects upon the
morals and habits of the natives produced
by life at the mining centres. The mining
authorities have not, as a rule, been friendly
to missions, and have not helped to provide
churches and schools. Yet the importance
of the work of the missionaries at the mining
centres cannot be over-estimated, and is
far-reaching in its effects. The native does
not stay long at the mines, he goes off home
to his far-distant village with his earnings,
and spreads there what he has learned for
good or evil during his absence.

In the British Protectorates that lie to the
north of United South Africa are many
flourishing and well-established missions.
Here are the great missions of the Scottish
Churches in North-eastern Rhodesia, at
Livingstonia, and in Nyassaland, and the
French Protestant Mission amongst the
Barotse, founded by Francois Coillard, one
of the most devoted of missionaries. Moshesh,
the chief of the Basuto, invited (1833) the

MISSIONS

French missionaries to live with Mm and teach
his people. The situation was very difficult;
the missionaries had to contend against the
prejudices and passions of a pagan people
for the most part ruled by the terrors of
witchcraft, and also to try to keep the peace
between the various tribes and to defend
the natives against the unjust encroachment
of Europeans. Coillard was a man of rare
devotion, and of great wisdom and tact.
The result of his life's work was the building
of many churches, schools and industrial
institutions. On the seventy-fifth anniversary
of the establishment of the mission, the
Resident Commissioner spoke of it as "a
unique spectacle in South Africa a native
tribe dwelling in peace and prosperity under
their own chief and their own laws, a
people advancing in civilisation, and having
everywhere the advantages of religious and
secular education freely offered to them."
This and many other missions, Dutch as well
as English, show what can be done to train
and develop the native.

In the large district of Portuguese East
Africa there is very little mission work; even

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS

the Roman Church, is not active here. In
German East Africa there are many mission
stations well placed, but quite inadequate to
reach the population scattered over this vast
district. There are several Roman Catholic
Missions with many priests and sisters at
work, as well as German Protestant Missions,
and the English Universities Mission with its
centre at Zanzibar. Zanzibar is the centre
also of Arab influence, and from it come
the traders and porters who penetrate into
every part of the German colony, and they,
as well as the native officials and soldiers in
the employment of the German Government,
are everywhere spreading the power of
Islam. There is much need here for an
increase in the number of missionaries, and
for the establishment of schools to check, by
Christian education, the advance of the Mos-
lem faith. Everywhere the importance of
education is emphasised by the missionaries
if a native Church is to be created, and if
the ignorant natives are to be saved from
hasty conversion to Islam. Much the same
conditions prevail in British East Africa;
but the vigorous young Church of Uganda

226 MISSIONS

Is already showing its zeal by sending out
evangelists to the heathen peoples in its
neighborhood.

In the opinion of those who have considered
the problem of Africa as a whole, the mission-
ary forces in Africa should be trebled to meet
even the needs of existing missions. A more
favourable attitude towards missions on the
part of Christian Governments in Africa is
also urgently needed, since it is clear that
missionaries have been the best pioneers of
commerce, the best promoters of friendly
relations between the different tribes, and
the best teachers of industry and order.
Hausaland, hitherto almost untouched, should
be made a great centre of missionary effort,
which should radiate from thence to all parts
of Africa, and be the most potent check to
the Mohammedan advance. Medical missions
have proved to be the most fruitful means of
penetrating amongst the Mohammedans them-
selves, and Christian schools the best method
of winning the still pagan natives, and
preparing the way for Christian teaching.

Christian missions were started in Mada-
gascar in 1820 with much success. A cruel

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 227

persecution tried the constancy of the early
converts, but ultimately led to the conversion
of many others, and finally of the queen and
many of the chief people of the island. But
since the French annexed Madagascar in 1895,
the missions have passed through very difficult
times. The Government, without showing
itself at all friendly to the Roman Catholic
Missions, is distinctly hostile to theProtestant
Missions, and by its regulations is making it
almost impossible for them to carry on their
work, yet the missionaries feel that they
must not desert their converts, who have
stood firm through many trials and difficulties.
In the wide territories of the Dominion of
Canada there is still need for the labours of
the missionary amongst the scattered tribes
of Red Indians, and amongst the Eskimos in
the frozen lands of the north. Here, from
the days of the Jesuit pioneers to the days
of Bishop BompasandDr. Grenf ell, missionary
heroes have travelled long days through ice
and snow in sledges and canoes to carry the
good tidings of the Gospel. The Government
both in Canada and in the United States is
doing much to help the missions in their work

228 MISSIONS

of educating and civilising the Indians who
still survive, and who, under improved con-
ditions, are even beginning to increase in
number. In Alaska the work of the American
missionaries among the Eskimos is made
very difficult by the character of the white men
who are attracted there by the quest for
gold. Along the western coast of North
America, mission work of many varied kinds
is needed amongst the Chinese, Japanese and
Hindus who have settled there.

South America was superficially converted
by the Spaniards and Portuguese in the early
days of their colonisation, but there still
remain Indian tribes in the interior quite
untouched by Christianity. They are very
difficult of approach by the missionary, since
they speak many different languages and live
buried in the tropical forests or along the
luxuriant river valleys, where the climate is
deadly to the white man. The very imperfect
Christianity of many of the nominal members
of the Roman Catholic Church has led the
North American Protestant Missions to direct
their energies to work amongst them rather
than to the more difficult task of reaching the

PRESENT EXTENT OP MISSIONS

still pagan peoples in the interior. Of late
years, more efforts have been made to reach
these still untouched peoples, but the diffi-
culties of work in South America, owing both
to the nature of the climate and to political
considerations, have led to its being largely
neglected by most Protestant Missionary
Societies, neither have the Roman Catholics
done much either to convert the heathen or
to improve the condition of the great mass of
those who are only nominally Christian.

Amongst the Moslem peoples on the Levant
and in Persia and Arabia, Christian Missions
have been carried on with extreme difficulty
and with little apparent result. Religious
freedom was non-existent for Moslems in the
Turkish Empire, and a converted Moslem
could only save his life by flight from his
country. It remains to be seen what changes
may follow from the new rule in Turkey. The
indirect effect of the educational work of the
Americans on the Levant, through their
schools and colleges, it is impossible to
measure. The Christian schools have set
the standard for education in Turkey, and the
influence of the character of the men trained

230 MISSIONS

in the American colleges has been felt in every
part of the Turkish Empire. Sir William
Ramsay writes: "I have come in contact
with men educated in Robert College (the
American College on the Bosphorus) in
widely separate parts of the country, men of
different races and different forms of religion,
and have everywhere been struck with the
marvellous way in which a certain uniform
type, direct, simple, honest and lofty in tone.,
has been impressed upon them; some had more
of it, some less, but all had it to a certain
degree, and it is diametrically opposite to the
type produced by growth under the ordinary
conditions of Turkish life." In his opinion,
Beirut and Robert Colleges have produced an
educated middle class in the Turkish Empire.
All through the East the influence of the
medical, literary and educational work of
these missions may be found. Thought and
life have been affected, if conversion has been
impossible. In Palestine, the attraction of
the associations of the country has led to the
establishment of many missions and much
unfortunate rivalry and overlapping. In
Armenia and Assyria, modern missions have

PRESENT EXTENT OF MISSIONS 31

gone to the help of the ancient Churches, which
had survived persecution and neglect, but were
languishing in isolation. During the terrible
Armenian massacres, the missionaries have
helped to save life and have shown both
prudence and heroism in a remarkable degree.
In Arabia, medical work is slowly forcing an
opening for Christian teaching, and is at least
doing something to remove hostility and
prejudice. Persia has some strong mission
centres with large hospitals, some of them
being amongst the best equipped in the
mission field. Here women as well as men
doctors are at work, and by their loving care
have been able to break down even the
hostility of the mullahs.

In this brief and imperfect survey of
Christian missions scattered over the whole
world, an attempt has been made to give some
idea of their many activities. In every country,
and almost in every mission station, it may
be said that the forces are inadequate for their
needs and for the great opportunities open
before them. In some districts the work can
only be said to have been begun. There are
besides many portions of the world where

MISSIONS

not even a beginning has been made. These
include large parts of Asia, such as Mongolia,
Turkestan, Tibet, and Afghanistan. In Africa,
more than one-third of the whole population,
especially in the central regions, is quite
outside the scope of any missionary agency.
The work is vast, the means to do it seem
hopelessly inadequate. Yet, in spite of all
discouragements, the most scientific statistics
show that Christians are increasing more
rapidly, both as regards their total number
and their ratio to the population of the world,
than the adherents of any other religion.

CHAPTER XI

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY

THE growth, and development of foreign
missions, the increased interest in them
during the last hundred years, is self-evident.
The duty and responsibility of Christians,
to whatever denomination they may belong,
to spread the knowledge of the Gospel is
more widely recognised than it has ever been
since the days of the early Church. The
change in the views taken on the subject can
be judged by the quality of the men and
women who offer themselves for this service.
When the great English Missionary Societies
were first founded, it was difficult to find
men of any kind ready to go out as mission-
aries, and during the first years of its exist-
ence, the Church Missionary Society had to
employ German Lutherans. Now, amongst
the missionaries of all societies are to be found
men who might, if they had chosen it, have

233

234 MISSIONS

been prominent In the ministry at home,
men of university distinction and states-
manlike powers, educationalists and medical
men and women who would have gained
professional eminence in any part of the
world. Most remarkable has been the In-
crease of women missionaries during the
latter part of the nineteenth century. This
has been closely allied with the general
movement for the higher education of women.
Women are learning to hear the call to service
not only in the home, but in the Church
and in the State, The educational oppor-
tunities opened to them after many struggles
and difficulties have enabled them to fit
themselves as doctors and teachers, to go
to the help of suffering and ignorant women
all over the world. The greater freedom
won for them to lead their own lives has
made enterprise and independence in this
work for others possible.

The ignorant opposition and even hostility
which was formerly shown to missions in
general has largely disappeared. But this
does not mean that there is not still much
opposition and much want of sympathy and

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY S5

understanding to be found. There are many
who tell us that the nations should be
left to develop on their own lines, and that
we should not try to foist Western ideas
upon the East. But Europe shows no
inclination to leave the East alone. The
progress of trade, the desire for colonial
expansion, political considerations, as well as
the mere desire for travel and adventure, are
carrying Western ideas over all the world.
The nations are not being left to develop on
their own lines. Intercourse with the civilised,
and progressive nations of the world makes
clear to the non-Christian peoples the in-
sufficiency of their own religions, whilst it
teaches them the vices of the civilised people;
we are bound to try to give them something
higher in return for what we are taking away.
In those parts of the world where white men
have settled amongst primitive peoples, in
Africa and Australia, the colonists are often
inclined to believe that to keep the black
man ignorant will make him more willing to
work for them in the ways that they desire.
This means practically the enslaving of the
inferior races in the service of the superior. It

236 MISSIONS

must lead to the degeneration of the superior;
it cannot lead to the development of the
inferior along their own lines, and hence
must only tend to their degradation. The
only way by which this danger can be avoided
is by the recognition of one aim for all, and
that aim, the common good of all.

But we are met again by the objection
that these people are not fit for Christianity,
that they are spoilt by conversion, that the
raw native is altogether a finer fellow than the
convert. To this it may be answered that
very few of those who criticise the natives
who call themselves Christians in any part
of the world take the trouble to find out
how far these men have any right to the
name of Christians. They may be nothing
more than persons who for a brief while
attended a mission school and were dismissed
for bad conduct; or their connexion with
a mission may belong to a remote past,
and their pretensions to Christianity may
be only revived in the hope of producing
a favourable impression. Apart from this,
people are apt to expect much too much from
converts, and to fail to realise the extraordin-

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 37

ary difficulty of their position. As an ex-
perienced missionary in China has said:
"They are shut off from what is the life of
many a Christian in a Christian country
and what is so helpful, the tradition behind
it, the hereditary examples and traditions,
the Christian atmosphere. The Christian
converts in the mission field stand up without
any of these helps. They stand up, to the
eye of the flesh alone, to face an unchristian
world; can we wonder if they sometimes
stumble and fall ? " In India, the loss of caste
consequent on baptism separates the convert
absolutely from all his former friends and
relations from everything on which his
former life was built. Yet Christians may
often be recognised by the happiness and
peace in their faces, and in every land and
in every age of the Church's history down
to the present day, converts have gladly
sacrificed wealth and position and friends,
and have endured persecution and horrible
torture and cruel deaths for the sake of
the Master they have chosen to follow.
That the blood of the martyrs is the seed
of the Church is as true in the mission field
to-day as it was in the days of Tertullian.

238 MISSIONS

On the whole, the general feeling in favour
of missions steadily grows stronger. Even
cold, dispassionate observers recognise the
good work that is being done, and some, not
Christians themselves, see in missions a means
by which the brotherhood of man is being
more fully realised. Each year, a larger
proportion of the members of all the different
denominations are led to take a more living
interest in foreign missions, and to feel that
the responsibility for them rests with the
Church as a whole, and not only with a small
section of interested persons. At the same
time with greater knowledge and wider
experience, there is a growing sense of the
difficulty of the task, of the need for careful
preparation for it, and for earnest study of its
problems. Fewmissionary societies at present
think that any person of zeal and devotion
who offers as a candidate is fit to be sent at
once to the foreign mission field. Tests of
increasing stringency are applied to candidates
and more and more time spent in preparation
and training is demanded from them. It is
being recognised that not only general theo-
logical training is needed by evangelists, not

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 239

only professional training by missionary
teachers, nurses and doctors, but that they
should also receive special teaching to prepare
them for the problems they will meet, teaching
in the history, the religions, the customs and
social organisation of the people amongst
whom they are going to work, as well as
opportunities for language-study, which will
enable them really to master the languages
in which they intend to teach. All this was
realised by the great missionaries of the past,
who got for themselves the teaching which,
in their day, no one was competent to give
them at home, and themselves laid the founda-
tions of those studies in languages, religions,
ethnology and sociology, which now attract
so much attention from scholars. But the
ordinary missionary was content to deliver
the simple message of the Gospel, and to
attempt to plant in a new country the forms
and observances which had grown up under
different circumstances and amongst different
peoples. Their efforts, however feeble, were
again and again crowned with success. The
story of the Gospel, and the witness offered
to the truth of that story, were sufficient to

240 MISSIONS

gain countless adherents. But the increasing
conviction that in order to build up strong
native Churches, opportunities for free growth
and development must be allowed to them,
and that the expression of Christian truth
must be in the terms, and in the form, of the
thought of the people itself points more and
more to the necessity that every missionary
should try to fit himself to know how to
present the truth, and how to guide the de-
velopment of the native Church.

One of the most marked characteristics of
the missionary activity of the present day
is the desire to find out how to improve
missionary methods, and how to use the
results of the study that has been devoted
by scholars in many lands to the history
of religions and sociology, for the advance-
ment of the Christian faith. Whilst increased
knowledge of other religions only convinces
them the more of the unique character
of the Christian religion and of its universal
application, missionary students yet see with
ever new clearness the truth taught by
St. Paul that God at no time and
amongst no people has left Himself without

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 241

a witness. They believe also that each new
people as it accepts the Christian faith will
add something to the fulness of its compre-
hension, and that the older Churches will
gain a new life and a richer apprehension
of the truth through the upspringing of
younger Churches in all parts of the world
and amongst people of many different gifts
and capacities. The difficult problem is how
to guide the young Churches, how to keep
them in living touch with the past whilst
giving them freedom to develop on their own
lines. Increasingly it is acknowledged that if
the great peoples of the East are to be won
for Christianity, it can only in the end be
through men of their own races. They do
not want a Western Christ; and though the
Christ that the missionaries of the West would
preach to them belongs neither to east nor
west but to mankind, it is impossible for men
of western blood and western traditions to
present even the Christ who, born in the East,
is the real link between East and West, except
in the forms of Western thought.

The leaders in the missionary enterprise
are more and more seeing the necessity of a

MISSIONS

wide and comprehensive view of their whole
task. Where the work to be done is so vast,
resources must be economised, the most
important centres must be strengthened, and
the right starting-points for further advance
must be occupied. The methods of work
need constant investigation, and no effort
must be spared to find the right people for the
work and to give them the necessary training
and equipment. The more the question is
studied as a whole, the more urgent and
insistent does the call to increased effort at
the present moment appear. The oppor-
tunity is such as it has never been before.
The travels of successive explorers have made
known the secret places of the earth. Im-
proved methods of communication have made
it possible to go easily and safely to any part
of the world, and have, in consequence, made
the world a smaller place. China, Japan, and
Korea, so long closed to foreigners, and the
mysterious centre of Africa, the dark continent,
are now open to all.

The general awakening in the East dates
from the time when, through a successful
war, Japan sprang at once into the position

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY

of a world-power. China, which, had been
thought to be on the very verge of dis-
solution, seemed to shake itself like a giant,
and is now busy in bringing about changes
with a rapidity which can only be de-
scribed as bewildering. All through Asia
a similar ferment is in process. The non-
Christian religions are losing their hold on
the educated classes, the leaders of the people;
and at the same time these leaders themselves
are more and more -feeling the necessity of
religion for the people, of religious teaching for
the young. Here is the opportunity for the
Christian teacher. But the call is urgent. At
the great missionary conference in Edinburgh
in 1910 a Chinese professor from Pekin said:
"The people of China are now giving away
the old, but they have not yet grasped the new.
The minds of the Chinese are now empty, and
this is the time for Christ to step in. If you
wait four or five or even three years, you will
find such a change in China that the minds of
her people will be blocked."

With the stirring of the spirit of nationality
in India and all over the East goes a keen
desire for more and better education. The

MISSIONS

government systems of education in China,
Japan* and India are absolutely secular, and
the same system is being followed in Turkey,
Egypt and Persia. The new education under-
mines the ancestral religions, and the young
generations are growing up without the old
faith, and often definitely hostile to Christian-
ity as Western and foreign. Hence the urgent
call to strengthen and improve the educational
work of missions, and to bring it into touch
with the best aspirations of the people.

In Africa, though perhaps for other reasons,
the moment is equally urgent on account of
the steady Moslem advance. It comes from
the north and east, and needs to be forestalled
and met by a strong and concerted advance
on the part of Christian Missions, For this
the missionaries claim from the administra-
tors of Christian Governments at least equal
rights and liberties with the Moslems, who are
often placed in a more favourable position
from the desire to preserve peace and order
and prevent outbursts of fanaticism. It is the
universal experience that native races, once
converted to Islam, are hardened against
Christianity, and if the progress of Islam in

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY M5

Africa is to be checked, an immediate increase
in the strength of Christian Missions in every
part of the continent is urgently needed.

A different opportunity is offered at the
present moment by the great mass movements
towards Christianity in many parts of the
world, especially in Korea and India. The
people are waiting and eager to be taught,
and there is the prospect not of individual
conversions alone, but of building up whole
communities in the Christian faith.

Again, there is a very different but an
equally urgent opportunity in the far West
to make the Christian religion a factor in the
development of the great new nation, that is
being created by emigrants from every part
of Europe, on the wide plains of Canada and
the rich mountain slopes and busy sea coast of
Columbia.

The work is so vast, the opportunities so
unrivalled, the call so urgent and clamorous
as to tax all the resources of Christendom,
and whilst it is true, perhaps, to say that
never before in modern times has the most
enlightened and progressive thought in the
Christian Church been so interested in foreign

MISSIONS

missions, it is also true to say that the greatest
hindrance to the progress of the work is to
be found in the condition of the Church at
home. The want of unity amongst the
different Christian bodies is the greatest
stumbling-block in the way of the spread of
the Gospel. Energy is consumed at home
by controversies and disputes; energy is
wasted abroad by competition between differ-
ent missions, and confusion is created in the
minds of non-Christians by the differences
and antagonisms of those who profess to
be followers of the same Master. Moreover,
though an increasing number of persons are
interested in missions, and support them to
the best of their ability, for the most part
the work is left to societies within a Church,
and is not considered incumbent on the
Church as a whole. In consequence, people
who give little or nothing to foreign missions
will spend large sums on the adornment of
churches and the luxuries of worship at
home. There are others who will urge the
folly of devoting money and energy to the
conversion of heathen abroad when there are
so many heathen at home. It is, however,

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 24*7

usually found that those who are most keen
about the work of the Church at home are
also most keen about its work abroad. More
and more It is being realised that there can
be no separation between these two sides of
its activity, and that a living Church must be
a growing and a Missionary Church.

It can be clearly seen that the lessons learnt
in the mission field react upon the life and
work of the Church at home, whilst the social
conditions in many great western cities are
used by enlightened non-Christians as an
argument against the truth of a religion which
has done so little for its own people. The
realisation of the brotherhood of man resting
upon the Fatherhood of God must be worked
out at the same time in the slums of the great
city, in the bazaars and Zenanas of India,
in the Kafir kraal, and amongst the teeming
multitudes of China. The unity of the work
is being recognised, and the need for unity
amongst the workers is being seen to be a
prime condition for the success of the work.
Of late years there have been many move-
ments in the direction of unity and co-
operation. There have been conferences, both

48 MISSIONS

at home and in the mission field, of many
different kinds. At Shanghai, two great
conferences of missionaries of all denomina-
tions have been held, and the Chinese desire
for unity f or one Church in China has found
strong expression. In Edinburgh, in 1910, a
missionary conference of representatives from
all important Christian organisations except
the Roman Church was held, and has left be-
hind it as a heritage not only a much better
understanding and warmer fellow-feeling be-
tween different denominations, but also various
schemes for further consideration of common
problems. In many parts of the mission field
there is co-operation of various kinds, and a
growing sense of honour as regards the avoid-
ance of competition or interference with other
missions. Unfortunately the Roman Catholic
Church stands coldly aloof from all conference
or co-operation of any kind with those whom
she considers heretics. This fact, amongst
many others, is a warning against any hasty
formulation of schemes or proposals for re-
union. It would make a really Catholic
Church almost hopelessly impossible for all
times if all the non-Roman bodies were to

THE PRESENT OPPORTUNITY 49

unite to form one great Protestant Church
as opposed to the Roman Church. Unity
will come as we learn how to recognise the
value of the truths for which others stand,
and to make room for their expression whilst
we maintain the truth which has been re-
vealed to us, and for which we stand. The
older Western Churches may well be helped
towards the unity which they have lost by
the lessons to be learnt from the new Churches
in the mission field.

No movement has been more helpful in
the promotion of unity by greater under-
standing and a spirit of true brotherliness
than the Student Volunteer Union and the
larger organisation of which it is an in-
tegral part the ChristianStudentMovement.
Students of both sexes and of all denomina-
tions and all nationalities join these unions,
thosebelonging to the Student Volunteer Union
pledging themselves, if it should be God's will,
to offer themselves as foreign missionaries*
Thus in their college days, before their definite
association with special organisations, they
learn to know and understand one another.
Those who are going to work abroad realise

250 MISSIONS

their unity of aim with those who are going
to work at home, and denominational differ-
ences assume their proper proportion in the
light of a common devotion.

The missionary enterprise now, as ever, is
the great adventure of the Christian Church.
It is the source of hope and courage, the vision
of the future to the believing Christian. Its
annals are as full of exciting incidents as
any romance, its ranks are rich with the
names of heroes, and the record of its work
brings new life and inspiration to those who,
in the complications and disillusionments of
the old world, are losing their ideals and their
faith.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

General

Report of the World Missionary Conference, 1910. Oliphant.
9 vols. This contains the reports of the eight commis-
sions appointed to study different aspects of the mis-
sionary problem, and is invaluable as giving the experience
and judgment of the present authorities, and the results
of the latest observations.

History of the Church Missionary Society . E. STOCK. C.M.S.
3 vols. Gives a history of the greatest missionary society,
and much information about the growth of missions
generally.

History of Protestant Missions. G. WARNECK. Oliphant.
Translated from the German, useful as an account of
continental Protestant Missions.

Missions and Modem History. R. E. SPEER. Revell & Co.
% vols. Brings missionary developments into connexion
with the great historical developments of the last sixty
years.

Histoire de la SocietS des Missions Etrangeres. A. LAUNAY.
Tegni: Paris. 3 vols. A history of the Roman Catholic
Missions conducted by the Paris Society from its founda-
tion, in the East, and Canada.

Katholische Missionsstatistik. H. A. KROSE. 1908. Gives
most careful information as to the extent of Roman
Catholic Missions and the numbers of their workers.

Statistical Atlas of Christian Missions. Marshall Bros. Is-
sued by the World Missionary Conference, with admir-
able maps and full information as to all -missionary soci-
eties.

Handbooks

Foreign Missions. BISHOP MONTGOMERY. Longmans.
Short Handbook of Foreign Missions. E. STOCK. Long-
mans. Short History of Christian Missions. G. SMITH.
Handbooks of English Church Expansion. Mowbray. Deal
with the work of the Anglican Church in Japan, Western
Canada, China, Australia, South Africa, North India. The
Decisive Hour of Christian Missions. T. R. MOTT. The
Desire of India. S. K DATTA. The Reproach of Islam.
W. H. T. GAIEDNEB. The Uplift of China. A. H. SMITH.
253

254 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Special Missions and Countries'

Changing China. LORD WILLIAM CECIL. NIsbet. South-
ern Indian Missions. T. A. SHARROCK. S.P.G. Christian
Missions in the Telugu Country. HIBBERT WARE. S.P.G.
Among the Wild Tribes of the Afghan Frontier. DR. PENNELL.
Seeley. History of Missions in India. T. RICHTER.
Oliphant. Full of information but not quite fair to Anglican
missions. Christian Missions in Burmah. W. C. B. PURSER.
S.P.G. History of Christian Missions in South Africa. Du
PLESSIS. Eighteen Years in Uganda and East Africa. BISHOP
TUCKER. Arnold. Pioneer Life and Work in New Guinea. J.
CHALMERS. An Outpost in Papua. CHIGNELL. History of
the Moravian Church. T. E. HUTTON. A Parson in the
Australian Bush. C. H. S. MATTHEWS. Arnold. The
Jesuits in North America. F. PARKMAN.

Some Missionary Biographies

Bishop, Edward Bicker steth. E. BICKERSTETH. Murray.
- Verbeck of Japan. GRIFFIS. Dr. Alex. Duff. G. SMITH.
Hodden Father Goreb. C. E. GARDINER. Longmans.
Our Sister Beatrice. GRACE GRIER. Longmans. Life of
James Hannington. E. DAWSON. Seeley. Mackay of
Uganda. I. W. HARRISON. Hodder. David Livingstone*
W. G. BLACKIE. Murray Khama. Mrs. KNIGHT BRUCE.
Bishop Patteson. T. PAGE. Partridge The Black Bishop.
T. PAGE. Simpkin. Bishop Bompas. CODY. Seeley. Bish-
op Selwyn. H. W. TUCKER At Work. Dr. MARIE HAYES.
Marshall Bros Letters from East Africa. G. M. WARD.
U.M.C.A.

A voluminous bibliography of books relating to missions is
to be found in vol. vi of the Report of the World Missionary
Conference. The Central Board of Missions of the Church
of England issues "A Select Bibliography" for the use of
students.

Leading Missionary Reviews

"The International Review of Missions." Quarterly.
"East and West." Quarterly. "Zeitschrift ftir Missions-
wissenschaft." Quarterly. (Roman Catholic). Every
missionary society issues one or more monthly or weekly
magazines, most of them being illustrated, which tell of the
work that is going on.

INDEX

Africa, 71-4, 102, 123, 130, 132,
140, 219-28

, Central, 173

, South, 81, 161, 162, 222-4

, West, 220

Africaner, 69
Alaska, 228
America, 55

, South, 228, 229

American Missions, 231, 232
Animists, the, 89, 92
Arabia, 231
Armenia, 230, 231
Assyria, 230
Australia, 81, 154-6

Baganda, the, 124-6, 182

Baptist Missionary Society, 57, 61

Barotse, the, 223

Bataks, the, 214

Bechuanas, the, 70, 184

Beck, John, 53

Beirut, 230

Blantyre, 102

Boers, the, 81, 82, 161

Bompas, Bishop, 227

Boniface, 10,11

Borneo, 213

Boxer riots, the, 126, 205

Bray, Dr., 54

Brebeuf, 45

Bressani, 44

Burma, 170, 212, 213

Cairo, 137-8, 141

Caldweli, Mrs., 116

Cambridge Mission, 99

Canada, 43, 44, 145-51, 153, 227

Carey, William, 56-61

Ceylon, 167

Chestnut, Dr., 127

China, 18, 19, 29, 37, 90, 92, 93,

100, 101, 107, 108, 118, 121, 122,

201-5, 242-4
Church Missionary Society, 62, 80,

115, 124, 235

Cochin China, 32, 34, 36, 37
Coillard, Francois, 223, 224
Columbus, 21 '
Congo, the, 79, 80, 191, 221
Corvino, John de Monte, 17, 19
Cromwell, 50
Crowther, Bishop, 220

Darwin, Charles, 68
Dominicans, 22, 30, 36

Duff, Dr., 97

Dutch East Indies, 218'

East Africa, 224, 225

India Company, the, 55,56, 58,

75, 76

Edinburgh Conference, the, 94, 248
El Azhar, 137, 138
Eliot, John, 49
Erasmus, 47, 48

Fiji, 67, 68

Francis of Assisi, 15, 13$

Franciscans, the, 31

Franke, August Hermann, 51

Fraser, Mr. A., 167,168

Frederick IV, King of Denmark, 51

French, Valpy, 134, 136

Gama, Vasco da, 21
Gleyo, 38
Goa, 26
Greenland, 53
Grenfell, Dr., 152, 227

Hannington, Bishop, 176, 177

Hausaland, 218

Herrenhut, 52

Hinduism, 94

Hudson Bay Company, the, 80,146

Hunter, Sir William, 99

Imad-ud-din, Dr., 136

India, 87, 90-3, 96, 100, 101, 110,

111, 114-8, 120-2, 144, 166, 208-

14, 247

Indians, Red, 153, 227
Indies, West, 153
Mam, 130-33, 225, 244, 245

Jamaica, 154

Japan, 64, 101, 198-201, 242, 244,

Jesuits, 24, 25, 28-32, 43-6, 92,201

Kafirs, the, 81, 82

Kandy, 167

Karens, the, 170

Katikiro, Kagwa Apolo, 179, 183

Khama, 183-89

Kols, the, 171

Koran, the, 131, 134

Korea, 87, 109, 199, 200, 242, 245

Krapf,Johann,71,72

Kublai Khan, 18, 19

255

256

INDEX

Labrador, 152

Lambert, de la Motte, 82-4

Las Casas, 22

Lavigerie, Cardinal, 219

Lawrence, Lord, 192

Lepers, 106, 107

Livingstone, David, 72-5, 102, 171

London Missionary Society,66, 188

Louis XIV, 36

Loyola, Igaatius, 25

Lugard, Captain, 180

Lull, Raymond, 15-17, 133

Macao, 37, 40

Machray, Archbishop, 146-9

Mackay, Alexander, 174-80

Madagascar, 36, 79, 226, 227

Manchuria, 202, 203

Maoris, the, 157, 101, 216, 217

Martyn, Henry, 75, 133, 134

Medical Missions, 104-6, 120, 226

Melanesia, 214, 215

Mission Consul, the, 78, 79

Moffat, Robert, 63, 69, 70, 73

Mohammed, 129

Mohammedans, 98, 128-43

Mongol Power, the, 17, 19, 20

Moravians, the, 52, 54, 152

Moshesh, 223

Moslems, the, 15-17, 77, 78, 128-

43, 219

Mtesa, King, 174, 175
Mwanga, King, 176, 182-4

Nestorian Church, the, 18

New Guinea, 214, 215

New Zealand, 81, 154, 155, 157-60,

161

Nobili, Robert de, 27, 29, 40
Nyassaland, 219, 22$

Okuma, Count, 197

Oxford Mission to Calcutta, 207

Pacific Islands, 66, 102, 159
Palestine, 230
Pallu, Francois, 32, S6-8
Paraguay, 24
Patrick, 9

Patteson, Bishop, 160
Persia, 121, 140, 231
Pfander, Dr., 134-5
Pietists, the, 50, 51
Pilgrim Fathers, the, 49
Polo, Marco, 18
Polynesian Islands, 217
Portuguese, the, 23, 32, 33, 40
Propaganda, the, 33, 64, 85

Rhenish Missionary Society. 213

Kicci, Father, 29, 40

Robert College, 250

Roman Catholic Missions, 64,193-

4, 201, 202, 219, 227
Rudra, Dr., 99
Rupertsland, 146

Saskatchewan, 151

Schwartz, Christian, 51, 52

Selwyn, Bishop, 157-60, 216

Serampore, 58, 60

Siam, 31, 35, 213

Sierra Leone, 220

Singapore, 213

Slave Trade, the, 141

Society for Promoting Female

Education in the East, 115
Society for the Promotion of

Christian Knowledge, 55
Society for the Propagation of the

Gospel, 55, 144
South India, 169, 171
Srinagar, 167, 168
Stanley, H. M., 173, 174, 221
Steere, Bishop, 172
Student Volunteer Union, 249
Sumatra, 78, 214

Tahiti, 67

Tonquin, 32, 33, 35, 39

Trinity College, Kandy, 168, 169

Tucker, Bishop, 123, 124, 181, 182

Turkey, 139, 140, 229, 244

Tyndale-Biscoe, Rev. C., 166

Uganda, 123, 124, 125, 173-83, 219,
225

Ulfilas, 9

Universities Mission, 74, 172

Vancouver, 152
Virginia, 49
Vladimir, 13

West Indies, 23
Williams, John, 67
Wilson, Bishop, 114
Women's Work, 112-27

Xavier, Francis, 25-7, 13S

Young, Sir Mackworth, 192
Younghusband, Captain, 193, 194

Zanzibar, 172, 225
Zenanas, 116-9

Ziegenbalg, 51
Zinzendorl, Co

Count, 53, 53

i

1 36 640